THE   POETRY  OF 

JOHN    DRYDEN 


BY 

MARK  VAN  DOREN 


NEW  YORK 

HARCOURT,  BRACE  AND  HOWE 
1920 


COPYRIGHT,   1920,  BT 
HABCOURT,  BRACE  AND  HOWE,  INC. 


Stack 

Annex 


TO 

CARL  VAN  DOREN 
IRITA  VAN  DOREN 


PREFACE 

This  is  an  effort  to  brighten  the  most  neglected 
side  of  the  greatest  neglected  English  poet.  There 
is  some  novelty,  I  hope,  in  a  treatment  on  an  ex- 
tended and  more  or  less  enthusiastic  scale  of  Dry- 
den's  non-dramatic  verse  as  a  body,  with  attention 
to  the  celebrator,  the  satirist,  the  journalist,  the 
singer,  and  the  story-teller  all  together.  No  justifi- 
cation will  be  required,  probably,  for  my  interest  in  a 
poetic  personality  always  important  and  never  more 
freshly  so  than  now. 

The  essay  owes  much  to  my  brother,  Carl  Van 
Doren,  whose  idea  it  largely  was  and  whose  immense 
resources  of  encouragement  were  always  at  my  com- 
mand. My  sister,  Irita  Van  Doren,  assisted  cheer- 
fully with  certain  details.  Professor  W.  P.  Trent 
brought  his  scholarship  to  bear  upon  the  book, 
along  with  an  old  and  well-considered  fondness  for 
the  poetry  under  discussion.  Professor  A.  H.  Thorn- 
dike  and  Professor  J.  B.  Fletcher  made  valuable 
suggestions  for  improving  the  manuscript.  It  is  an 
especial  pleasure  to  acknowledge  favors  received  in 
England,  where  I  spent  some  months  as  a  fellow 
from  Columbia  University.  The  officials  of  the 
British  Museum  were  courteous  in  all  respects.  Sir 
Arthur  Dryden  of  Canons  Ashby  was  hospitable  and 
variously  helpful.  Mr.  Percy  L.  Babington  of 
Cambridge  University  was  most  liberal  with  his 


vi  PREFACE 

information  concerning  John  Oldham.  I  have  been 
pleasantly  in  debt  from  the  first  to  Professor  Saints- 
bury,  who  has  lost  no  opportunity  in  forty  years  for 
speaking  well  of  Dryden,  and  whose  spirited  mono- 
graph in  the  English  Men  of  Letters  I  could  only 
expect  to  supplement.  For  talks  on  Dryden  and 
other  subjects  I  am  happy  to  remember  my  travel- 
ling companion,  Joseph  Wood  Krutch. 

MARK  VAN   DOREN. 


CONTENTS 

Page 

I.  THE  MAKING  OF  THE  POET I 

II.  FALSE  LIGHTS 39 

III.  THE  TRUE  FIRE 86 

IV.  THE  OCCASIONAL  POET 137 

V.  THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE 178 

VI.  THE  LYRIC  POET 219 

VII.  THE  NARRATIVE  POET 260 

VIII.  REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION 292 

APPENDIX:  The  Authorship  of  Mac  Flecknoe, .  .  .   339 
INDEX 351 


THE 
POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  POET 

The  world  has  not  been  inclined  to  make  way  for 
John  Dry  den  the  poet.  When  he  died  in  1700,  the 
generalissimo  of  English  verse,  it  seemed  certain  to 
the  survivors  that  the  momentum  of  his  name 
would  keep  his  works  forever  rolling  abreast  of 
the  generations.  But  before  a  single  century  had 
passed,  he  had  begun  to  live  rather  in  the  stiffness 
than  in  the  strength  of  his  eminence;  and  another 
century  saw  him  laid  carefully  away  among  the 
heroes. 

Since  Dryden  was  laid  away,  the  world  has  not 
been  exactly  incurious  about  his  tarnished  remains. 
It  was  the  fashion  a  hundred  years  ago  to  classify 
the  poets,  and  level  them  into  orders;  at  such  times 
Dryden  was  likely  to  be  sent  with  Pope  to  seek  the 
second  level.  The  nineteenth  century,  anxious  to 
know  what  past  poets  had  been  great  and  why, 
sounded  Dryden  to  the  depths  for  notes  which  it 
could  recognize;  Lowell  went  eagerly  through  him, 
thinking  to  decide  once  for  all  how  much  of  a  poet 
he  was,  and  revising  his  judgment  at  every  tenth 


2  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

page.  Latterly  the  critics  with  historical  bent  and 
eclectic  taste  have  been  busy  either  at  placing  Dry- 
den  in  time  or  at  explaining  his  imperfections  by  an 
appeal  to  the  shortcomings  of  the  audience  for  which 
he  wrote.  This  tasting  and  this  research  have 
done  much  to  lay  bare  huge  flaws  and  inequalities 
hi  the  surface  which  Dryden  presented  to  posterity. 
Little  has  been  done  in  the  way  of  exploring  the 
large  spirit  which  worked  beneath  that  surface,  or 
in  surveying  other  surfaces  less  conspicuous.  The 
embattled  seventeenth  century  left  a  number  of 
bruised  and  defective  monuments,  none  of  which 
is  more  engaging  than  the  poetry  of  John  Dryden. 

The  story  of  Dry  den's  poetry  is  the  story  of  a  sin- 
ewy mind  attacking  bulky  materials.  Since  we 
know  next  to  nothing  about  Dryden's  mind  before 
it  ripened,  the  story  naturally  begins  for  us  with  the 
materials  which  are  known  to  have  lain  at  hand  dur- 
ing the  years  of  his  growth. 

The  thirty  years,  from  1631  to  1660,  during 
which  Dryden  came  slowly  to  his  maturity,  saw 
many  slender  volumes  of  fine  verse  published  in 
England,  the  work  of  Milton,  Herbert,  Randolph, 
Carew,  Suckling,  Lovelace,  Crashaw,  Vaughan,  and 
Herrick.  Yet  after  Ben  Jonson  no  one  poetic  per- 
sonality was  dominant  in  these  years,  and  there 
flowed  no  current  powerful  enough  to  draw  young 
writers  in.  Of  the  nine  poets  who  have  just  been 
named,  six  had  done  their  work  in  comparative  iso- 
lation, and  the  other  three  had  been  content  to 
toss  off  courtly  trifles.  Dryden  is  temperamentally 
akin  to  none  of  them,  and  it  is  unlikely  that  they 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  POET  3 

impressed  him  in  his  youth;  although  it  must  be 
remembered  that  his  first  considerable  poem,  the 
Heroic  Stanzas  of  1659,  contains  in  the  thirty-fifth 
stanza  a  faint  echo  of  Milton's  Ode  on  the  Morning 
of  Christ's  Nativity: 

But  first,  the  Ocean,  as  a  tribute,  sent 

That  Giant-Prince  of  all  her  watery  herd; 

And  th'  isle,  when  her  protecting  Genius  went, 
Upon  his  obsequies  loud  sighs  conferred. 

Other  poets,  past  and  present,  he  gradually  became 
acquainted  with  before  1660.  Jonson  must  always 
have  been  to  an  extent  congenial.  Chaucer,  Spenser, 
and  Shakespeare  he  was  not  prepared  so  early  to 
admire.  But  by  Sylvester  he  was  "rapt  into  ec- 
stasy"; and  Quarles  and  Wither  furnished  him 
thin  nourishment.  There  were  hundreds  of  plays  to 
be  read.  He  was  not  ignorant  of  Fairfax's  transla- 
tion of  Tasso.  Soon  or  late  he  came  to  know  Michael 
Drayton,  whose  label  for  Samuel  Daniel,  "too  much 
historian  in  verse,"  Dryden  adopted  for  Lucan  in  the 
preface  to  Annus  Mirabilis;  and  whose  apostrophe 
to  Daniel, 

And  thou,  the  sweet  Musseus  of  these  times, 
Pardon  my  rugged  and  unfiled  rhymes, 

curiously  anticipates  Dryden's  own  verses  in  honor 
of  John  Oldham.  We  may  be  certain  that  he 
read  an  abundance  of  very  bad  poetry  in  his 
green,  unknowing  youth.  Professor  Saintsbury 
has  shown  that  he  was  acquainted  with  Edward 
Benlowes,  almost  the  worst  poet  England  has  pro- 


4  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

duced.  The  poems  of  William  Cartwright  which 
were  collected  in  1651  include,  among  some  respec- 
table complimentary  pieces,  two  on  smallpox  which 
if  seen  by  Dryden  before  1649  could  have  inspired 
his  unhappy  effusion  on  Lord  Hastings.  The  "  Cleve- 
landisms  "  which  Lisideius  damns  in  the  Essay  of 
Dramatic  Poesy  in  1668  probably  were  not  anathema 
to  Dryden  a  dozen  years  before. 

Had  Dryden  never  indulged  in  more  than  random 
reading  among  the  poets,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  he 
would  never  himself  have  become  a  poet  of  dimen- 
sions. No  one  was  better  aware  of  what  he  needed 
to  read  than  he.  ''Mere  poets,"  he  wrote  in  the 
postcript  to  the  Notes  and  Observations  on  the 
Empress  of  Morocco  (1674),  "are  as  sottish  as  mere 
drunkards  are,  who  live  in  a  continual  mist,  without 
seeing  or  judging  anything  clearly.  A  man  should 
be  learned  in  several  sciences,  and  should  have  a 
reasonable,  philosophical,  and  in  some  measure  a 
mathematical  head,  to  be  a  complete  and  excellent 
poet;  and  besides  this,  should  have  experience  in 
all  sorts  of  humours  and  manners  of  men.  .  .  .  Mr. 
Settle  having  never  studied  any  sort  of  learning  but 
poetry,  ...  as  you  may  find  by  his  writings,  .  .  . 
;  must  make  very  lame  work  on  't."  Although  Dry- 
den was  speaking  here  of  dramatic  poets,  it  is  fair 
to  accept  these  sentences  as  trustworthy  guides 
through  the  twists  and  turns  of  his  culture. 

"For  my  own  part,  who  must  confess  it  to  my 
shame,  ...  I  never  read  anything  but  for  pleasure," 
he  declared  in  the  Life  of  Plutarch  (1683).  But 
pleasure  for  him  meant  the  satisfying  of  intellec- 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  POET  5 

tual  curiosity  as  well  as  it  meant  diversion;  from 
the  beginning,  there  can  be  no  doubt,  he  was 
pleased  to  read  widely  and  was  avid  of  informa- 
tion. "He's  a  man  of  general  learning,"  sneered 
Settle.  Dryden  was  not  an  exact  or  patient  scholar, 
nor  was  he  obsessed  with  the  pedantry  that  had 
produced  works  like  Burton's  Anatomy  of  Melan- 
choly earlier  in  the  century.  Although  he  loved 
learning  and  argument  and  could  not  refrain  from 
literary  history  and  criticism,  although  he  loaded 
his  poems  with  science  and  mythology  and  theol- 
ogy, he  was  never  weighed  down  with  learned 
lumber.  In  the  Rehearsal  he  is  represented  with  a 
common-place  book  in  his  hand  from  which  he  is 
ever  drawing  the  happiest  images  and  sentences  of 
Persius,  Seneca,  Horace,  Juvenal,  Claudian,  Pliny, 
Plutarch,  and  Montaigne.  Though  this  may  not 
be  a  true  likeness,  it  brings  into  relief  a  bent  of 
Dryden's  which  must  have  been  apparent  early  in 
his  career.  Congreve  records  that  he  had  an  un- 
failing memory,  and  Dr.  Johnson  was  inclined  to 
attribute  his  large  stock  of  information  rather  to 
"accidental  intelligence  and  various  conversa- 
tion" than  to  diligent  and  solitary  reading.  How- 
ever he  may  have  come  by  his  lore,  he  came  by  it 
eagerly,  at  a  time  when  the  old  was  mingling  with 
the  new,  and  all  the  surfaces  of  knowledge  were 
being  broken  rapidly  into  fresh  forms. 

It  is  not  known  exactly  when  Dryden  entered 
Westminster  School,  or  in  detail  what  he  did  there. 
But  a  good  deal  is  known,  both  generally  about  the 
character  of  English  schools  in  those  days  and 


6  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

particularly  about  the  character  of  Dryden's  mas- 
ter, Busby.  The  English  grammar  schools  before 
the  Restoration  clung  to  the  old  omnibus  ideals  of 
education  which  stressed  the  encyclopedic  and  the 
sententious.  For  a  century  Latin  had  led  in  the 
school  curriculums,  supplanting  logic.  Wolsey  had 
advised  that  Virgil  be  "pronounced  with  due  intona- 
tion of  voice,"  out  of  regard  for  "the  majesty  of 
his  verse,"  and  during  the  first  half  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  the  discipline  in  Latin  was  espe- 
cially complete.  Exercises  in  Greek  received  for 
the  most  part  only  secondary  emphasis,  although 
Westminster  School  was  famous  for  its  Greek  stud- 
ies, three  different  head-masters,  Grant,  Camden, 
and  Busby,  having  produced  Greek  grammars. 
Charles  Hoole,  in  his  New  Discoverie  of  the  Old  Art 
of  Keeping  Schools,  1660,  furnishes  the  best  testi- 
mony we  have  upon  mid-century  curriculums.  Ac- 
cording to  him,  boys  began  very  early  to  trans- 
late English  verse  into  Latin,  keeping  notebooks 
by  them  wherein  they  entered  choice  classical 
phrases  to  assist  them  in  avoiding  Anglicisms.  The 
"figura"  and  "prosodia"  of  rhetoric  were  by  no 
means  neglected,  and  for  a  show  of  wisdom  the 
pupils  were  taught  to  embellish  their  themes  with 
apologues,  fables,  adages,  "witty  sentences"  an- 
cient or  modern,  hieroglyphics,  emblems,  sym- 
bols, ancient  laws  and  customs,  and  biographical 
illustrations  out  of  Plutarch.  Dr.  Richard  Busby 
of  Westminster  was  the  most  famous  schoolmaster 
of  the  century;  during  his  fifty-seven  years  of  in- 
cumbency Westminster  produced  more  notable 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  POET  7 

men  than  any  other  school  has  produced  in  a  hun- 
dred. When  Dryden  published  his  translation 
of  Persius  in  1693,  he  dedicated  the  fifth  Satire 
to  Dr.  Busby,  "to  whom  I  am  not  only  obliged 
myself  for  the  best  part  of  my  own  education,  and 
that  of  my  two  sons,  but  have  also  received  from 
him  the  first  and  truest  taste  of  Persius";  and  be- 
fore the  third  Satire  he  remarked,  "I  remember  I 
translated  this  Satire,  when  I  was  a  King's  scholar 
at  Westminster  School,  for  a  Thursday  night's 
exercise."  Some  notion  of  the  school  discipline  in 
Dryden's  day  may  be  gained  from  the  account 
left  by  another  of  Dr.  Busby's  boys.  "Betwixt 
one  to  three,  that  lesson  which,  out  of  some  author 
appointed  for  that  day,  had  been  by  the  Master 
expounded  into  them  (out  of  Cicero,  Virgil,  Homer, 
Euripides;  Isocrates;  Livie,  Sallust,  etc.)  was  to  be 
exactlie  gone  through  by  construing  and  other 
grammatical  waies,  examining  all  the  rhetorical 
figures  and  translating  it  out  of  verse  into  prose, 
or  out  of  prose  into  verse;  out  of  Greek  into  Latin; 
or  out  of  Latin  into  Greek.  Then  they  were  en- 
joined to  commit  that  to  memorie  against  the  next 
morning."  1 

It  was  Coleridge's  belief  that  the  whole  tone  of 
Augustan  poetry  in  England  was  derived  from 
such  academic  practices  as  these,  which  freighted 
the  styles  of  many  generations  of  schoolboys  with 
conventional  imagery  and  stereotyped  epithets. 
Certainly  it  was  under  Busby  that  Dryden  con- 

1  Barker,  G.  F.  R.,  Memoir  of  Richard  Busby,  D.  D.    London,  1895, 
p.  80. 


8  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

tracted  the  Latinism  of  thought  and  speech  which 
proved  later  both  a  blessing  and  a  curse.  His  Lat- 
inism helped  him  to  be  clear  and  strong,  as  he  in- 
dicated in  his  dedication  of  Troilus  and  Cressida: 
"I  am  often  put  to  a  stand  in  considering  whether 
what  I  write  be  the  idiom  of  the  tongue,  or  false 
grammar,  and  nonsense  couched  beneath  that 
specious  name  of  Anglicism;  and  have  no  other 
way  to  clear  my  doubts,  but  by  translating  my 
English  into  Latin,  and  thereby  trying  what  sense 
the  words  will  bear  in  a  more  stable  language." 
But  his  Latinism  also  encouraged  him  to  write  too 
much  in  that  diffuse  manner  which  so  ludicrously 
vitiated  the  verse  of  the  next  century.  When  he 
was  not  at  his  raciest,  for  instance,  he  could  write 
lines  like  these  from  Britannia  Rediviva: 

As  when  a  sudden  storm  of  hail  and  rain 
Beats  to  the  ground  the  yet  unbearded  grain, 
Think  not  the  hopes  of  harvest  are  destroyed 
On  the  flat  field,  and  on  the  naked  void; 
The  light  unloaded  stem,  from  tempest  freed, 
Will  raise  the  youthful  honours  of  his  head; 
And,  soon  restored  by  native  vigour,  bear 
The  timely  product  of  the  bounteous  year. 

If  Westminster  offered  a  style,  Cambridge  be- 
stowed the  broader  gifts  of  taste  and  thought. 
Dryden  entered  Trinity  College  in  1650  and  stayed 
at  least  four  years.  It  is  at  this  point  that  Au- 
brey's note  in  his  Minutes  of  Lives,  "John  Drey- 
den,  esq.,  Poet  Laureate.  He  will  write  it  for  me 
himselfe,"  most  tantalizes.  From  1654  to  the 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  POET  9 

death  of  Cromwell  we  know  nothing  about  Dry- 
den;  but  we  may  suppose  that  somewhere  he  pri- 
vately read  and  wrote  to  advantage  during  those 
years,  since  the  Heroic  Stanzas  reveal  a  mind  al- 
ready careful  and  full.  From  nineteen  to  twenty- 
eight  Dryden  was  a  student;  and  it  is  important 
to  know  what  he  learned. 

"I  am,  ridiculously  enough,  accused  to  be  a  con- 
temner  of  universities;"  he  told  Sir  Charles  Sedley 
in  the  dedication  of  The  Assignation  in  1673,  "that 
is,  ...  an  enemy  of  learning;  without  the  founda- 
tion of  which,  I  am  sure,  no  man  can  pretend  to  be  a 
poet."  Shadwell  swore  in  his  Medal  of  John  Bayes 
(1682)  that  Dryden  "came  first  to  Town"  when 
"a  raw  young  fellow  of  seven  and  twenty";  which 
seems  to  indicate  that  the  poet  remained  in  resi- 
dence either  at  the  university  or  with  his  Round- 
head relatives  at  Tichmarsh  for  four  years  after 
1654.  The  Reverend  Dr.  Crichton,  however,  a 
contemporary  at  Cambridge,  was  warrant  for 
another  story:  "he  stayed  to  take  his  Bachelor's 
degree,  but  his  head  was  too  roving  and  active,  or 
what  else  you'll  call  it,  to  confine  himself  to  a  col- 
lege life,  and  so  he  left  it  and  went  to  London  into 
gayer  company,  and  set  up  for  a  poet."  1  What- 
ever the  impatience  with  which  he  went  to  Lon- 
don, he  took  many  an  occasion  in  later  years  to 
pay  beautiful  compliments  to  the  universities.  In 
the  Life  of  Plutarch  he  duly  acknowledged  his  debt 
to  Trinity  College.  And  his  prologues  and  epi- 
logues at  Oxford  are  luxuriant  with  praise  of  the 

1  W.  D.  Christie.    Selections  from  Dryden.    zd  ed.  Oxford,  1873,  p.  xvi. 


io  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

place.    Mrs.  Marshall  addressed  an  audience  there 
in  1674  as  follows: 

Oft  has  the  poet  wished  this  happy  seat 
Might  prove  his  fading  Muse's  last  retreat: 
I  wondered  at  his  wish,  but  now  I  find 
He  sought  for  quiet,  and  content  of  mind; 
Which  noiseful  towns  and  courts  can  never  know, 
And  only  in  the  shades,  like  laurels,  grow. 
Youth,  ere  it  sees  the  world,  here  studies  rest, 
And  age,  returning  thence,  concludes  it  best. 

Another  university  prologue  ended  with  the  famous 
lines: 

Oxford  to  him  a  dearer  name  shall  be, 
Than  his  own  mother  university. 
Thebes  did  his  green  unknowing  youth  engage; 
He  chooses  Athens  in  his  riper  age. 

During  Dryden's  residence  at  Cambridge  the 
university  was  under  the  thumb  of  the  Puritans, 
who  in  1644  had  evicted  all  Royalist  tutors.  The 
old  academic  peace  suffered  less  disturbance  than 
might  have  been  expected.  The  discipline  even 
improved,  and  solid  progress  continued  to  be 
made  in  philosophy  and  science.  It  was  here  at 
least  that  Dryden  proceeded  to  widen  his  acquaint- 
ance with  the  Latin  poets,  to  store  his  mind  with 
the  old  scholastic  forms  of  speculation  and  dis- 
course, to  become  aware  of  the  new  trend  and  the 
new  processes,  to  dabble  in  natural  science,  to  read 
Descartes  and  Hobbes. 

The  same  observer  who  saw  Dryden  dash  off  to 
London  to  set  up  for  a  poet  declares  that  while 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  POET  n 

still  at  Cambridge  "he  had  to  his  knowledge  read 
over  and  very  well  understood  all  the  Greek  and 
Latin  poets."  A  faith  then  reigned  that  the  clas- 
sics were  a  sufficient  and  final  compendium  of  wis- 
dom, eloquence,  and  beauty.  Addison  was  not 
for  fifty  years  yet,  writing  home  from  Virgil's 
Italy,  to  found  a  more  or  less  flushed  worship  of 
Greece  and  Rome.  The  homage  of  the  mid-seven- 
teenth century  was  somewhat  dry,  and  paid  from 
a  distance.  Dryden  accepted  his  Greeks  and- 
Romans  without  question,  but  also  without  hot  sen- 
timent. 

William  Gifford,  springing  once  to  the  defense 
of  Ben  Jonson,  asserted  that  "Dryden  had  merely 
the  Greek  and  Latin  of  a  clever  schoolboy."  Dry- 
den had  more  than  that.  He  not  only  knew  his 
poets;  he  enormously  respected  them,  and  used 
them.  His  opinions  of  them  were  likely  to  be 
the  traditional  opinions  that  Scaliger's  brilliant 
criticism  had  made  standard.  But  he  employed 
them  for  purposes  quite  his  own.  His  Greek  was 
not  half  so  good  as  his  Latin.  His  examples  from 
Greek  life  are  very  few;  he  fell  back  upon  Latin 
texts  of  Homer  and  Theocritus,  and  he  knew  Long- 
inus  only  through  the  French  of  Boileau,  or  per- 
haps the  English  of  John  Hall.  He  preferred  the 
severer  muses  of  the  Romans,  he  said,  to  "the 
looseness  of  the  Grecians."  He  shared  here  the 
bias  of  his  age;  the  Augustans  were  Augustans,  not 
Hellenes.  His  "old  master  Virgil"  was  never  al- 
lowed to  go  so  long  as  a  year  without  the  tribute  of 
praise  or  imitation.  Any  one  who  reads  the  pref- 


12  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

aces  to  Annus  Mirabilis  and  the  folio  of  1697  can- 
not remain  in  doubt  what  Latin  poet  was  Dry  den's 
lifelong  dictator.  From  another  master,  Lucre- 
tius, Dryden  learned  the  secret  architecture  of 
reasoned  verse;  learned  to  run  swiftly  yet  carry 
heavy  weights;  learned  his  favorite  images  of  dark- 
ness and  light,  eclipse  and  chaos,  ordered  atoms 
and  whirling  worlds.  In  a  third  master,  Ovid, 
whom  he  says  he  read  in  Sandys'  translation  when 
a  boy,  he  found  a  sparkling  mind  inferior  to  the 
other  two,  but  one  that  fascinated  him.  Ovid,  the 
favorite  of  Chaucer  and  Spenser  and  Shakespeare 
and  Milton,  the  purveyor  of  mythological  lore  to 
every  English  poet,  the  "sweet  witty  soul"  who 
was  at  once  tender  and  mocking,  at  once  flexible 
and  hard,  at  once  allusive  and  brisk,  taught  Dry- 
den  his  gait,  and  showed  him  how  to  turn  all  the 
sides  of  his  mind  to  the  light.  For  the  first  twenty 
years  after  the  Restoration  Dryden's  London  was 
to  reproduce  with  a  certain  amount  of  accuracy 
the  Rome  of  Ovid.  With  civil  war  just  past  and 
a  commonwealth  overthrown,  with  court  and  city 
beginning  to  realize  their  power,  with  peace  pre- 
vailing and  cynicism  in  fashionable  morals  ram- 
pant, with  a  foreign  culture  seeking  the  favor  of 
patrons  and  wits,  the  new  city  did  for  a  while 
bear  a  strange  resemblance  to  the  old  Empire;  so 
that  the  vogue  of  Ovid  in  those  years  is  not  difficult 
to  understand.  Juvenal  and  Persius  lent  their 
larger,  angrier  tones  to  Dryden  at  Cambridge. 
Nor  was  Dryden  indifferent  to  the  curiosa  felic- 
itas  of  Horace;  but  he  was  not  equipped,  as  Ben 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  POET  13 

Jonson  and  Herrick  were,  to  achieve  anything  like 
it  in  practice.  He  knew  Lucan's  busy  epic  and 
Seneca's  bloody  plays,  and  he  was  fond  in  later 
life  of  paraphrasing  Statius  on  sleep.  The  follow- 
ing soliloquy  on  night,  from  the  Indian  Emperor, 
which  Wordsworth  correctly  called  "vague,  bom- 
bastic and  senseless,"  has  often  been  quoted  by 
incautious  admirers  of  Dryden  in  a  misdirected 
effort  to  prove  that  he  could  do  justice  to  Nature: 

All  things  are  hushed,  as  Nature's  self  lay  dead; 
The  mountains  seem  to  nod  their  drowsy  head; 
The  little  birds  in  dreams  their  songs  repeat, 
And  sleeping  flowers  beneath  the  night-dew  sweat. 
Even  lust  and  envy  sleep;  yet  love  denies 
Rest  to  my  soul,  and  slumber  to  my  eyes. 

The  lines  come  straight  from  Statius'  Sylvce. 

Dryden  was  rarely  successful  in  his  descriptions 
of  Nature  and  his  accounts  of  the  human  passions, 
as  we  shall  see  in  another  place.  What  data  he  did 
possess  upon  these  subjects  he  had  borrowed,  not 
very  happily,  from  the  classical  poets.  He  had 
learned  from  Sappho,  according  to  Addison,  that 
persons  in  love  alternately  burn  and  freeze.  He 
had  learned  from  Virgil  that  in  sudden  fright  the 
knees  tremble  and  the  breath  deserts  the  frame. 
He  had  learned  from  Lucretius  the  terminology 
of  physical  love.  He  contracted  from  them  all  his 
taste  for  dealing  in  blood  and  hardness  and  cruelty. 
But  what  more  deeply  affected  him  than  this  was 
the  tradition  of  Roman  virtue,  male  virtue,  which 
he  found  recited  so  admirably  in  the  ancient  his- 


14  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

tories.  "When  we  hear  this  author  speaking,"  he 
says  of  Polybius,  "we  are  ready  to  think  ourselves 
engaged  in  a  conversation  with  Cato  the  Censor, 
with  Lelius,  with  Massinissa,  and  with  the  two 
Scipios;  that  is,  with  the  greatest  heroes  and  most 
prudent  men  of  the  greatest  age  in  the  Roman 
commonwealth.  This  sets  me  ...  on  fire."  His 
dedications  are  replete  with  Roman  examples, 
and  tempered  with  a  rare  Augustan  awe,  as  here 
in  the  dedication  of  An  Evening's  Love  to  the  Duke 
of  Newcastle: 

Thus,  my  Lord,  the  morning  of  your  life  was  clear 
and  calm;  and  though  it  was  afterwards  overcast,  yet, 
in  that  general  storm,  you  were  never  without  a  shelter. 
And  now  you  are  happily  arrived  to  the  evening  of  a  day 
as  serene  as  the  dawn  of  it  was  glorious;  but  such  an  even- 
ing as,  I  hope,  and  almost  prophesy,  is  far  from  night. 
'Tis  the  evening  of  a  summer's  sun,  which  keeps  the  day- 
light long  within  the  skies.  The  health  of  your  body  is 
maintained  by  the  vigour  of  your  mind:  neither  does  the 
one  shrink  from  the  fatigue  of  exercise,  nor  the  other  bend 
under  the  pains  of  study.  Methinks  I  behold  in  you 
another  Caius  Marius,  who,  in  the  extremity  of  his  age,  ex- 
ercised himself  almost  every  morning  in  the  Campius  Mar- 
tius,  amongst  the  youthful  nobility  of  Rome.  And  after- 
wards in  your  retirements,  when  you  do  honour  to  poetry 
by  employing  part  of  your  leisure  in  it,  I  regard  you  as 
another  Silius  Italicus,  who,  having  passed  over  his  con- 
sulship with  applause,  dismissed  himself  from  business, 
and  from  the  gown,  and  employed  his  age  amongst  the 
shades,  in  the  reading  and  imitation  of  Virgil. 

It  was  in  these  spacious  precincts  that  Dryden's 
imagination  was  most  at  home;  in  this  distant  and 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  POET  15 

mellow  morality  Declarations  of  Indulgence  and 
Test  Acts  were  intrusive  trifles,  and  the  neces- 
sity of  choosing  between  a  James  and  a  William 
but  a  dwarfish  dilemma. 

"The  old  and  the  new  philosophy"  was  a  phrase 
often  on  the  lips  of  Dryden  and  his  contempora- 
ries. The  seventeenth  century,  from  Bacon  to 
Locke,  saw  many  inroads  made  by  the  new  phys-\ 
ics  and  the  new  psychology  upon  established 
modes  of  faith  and  behavior.  At  no  period  dur-  *>h.  t 
ing  the  century  was  the  shift  being  made  more 
rapidly  than  it  was  in  the  sixth  decade,  when  Dry- 
den  lived  at  Cambridge.  Dryden,  witnessing  the 
unequal  conflict  between  scholasticism  and  ex- 
perimental science,  between  formal  logic  and  com- 
mon sense,  may  not  have  comprehended  all  that 
was  being  done.  There  is  no  sign  that  he  had  un- 
usual gifts  for  recognizing  or  criticising  ideas;  he  was 
not  a  metaphysician;  yet  he  must  have  been  aware 
of  being  present  at  a  death.  It  was  the  scholas- 
tic habit  of  thinking  and  discoursing  that  was  dy- 
ing; it  was  the  disputation  that  was  going  out.  As 
far  back  as  the  days  when  James  I  delighted  to 
attend  the  disputations  at  Cambridge,  disputa- 
tions had  been  archaic.  And  Thomas  Randolph, 
who  studied  at  Trinity  College  thirty  years  before 
Dryden,  could  only  praise  the  Aristotelianism  of 
his  instruction  as  something  quaint.  The  medie- 
val tradition  lingered  on,  however,  and  Dryden 
was  still  able  to  look  upon  the  ruins  of  those  "Vast 
Bodies  of  Philosophic"  irreverently  invoked  by 
Cowley  in  his  poem  To  Mr.  Hobbes.  To  Dryden  the 


16  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

hoary  structures  were  not  without  their  charm, 
and  he  did  not  pass  them  by  without  making  them 
yield  the  secrets  of  their  form,  however  little  he 
cared  for  the  dubious  treasures  of  their  content. 
He  retained  to  the  last  a  touch  of  the  scholas- 
tic in  his  method  of  framing  thoughts  and  arriving 
at  distinctions.  Upon  more  than  one  occasion  he 
showed  himself  familiar  with  the  language  of  the 
schools,  even  the  jargon.  "He  delighted  to  talk 
of  liberty  and  necessity,  destiny  and  contingence," 
said  Dr.  Johnson.  He  had  only  the  medieval  idiom 
for  soul  and  body  at  his  commandj  The  famous 
lines  on  Shaftesbury's 

.  .  .  fiery  soul,  which,  working  out  its  way, 

Fretted  the  pigmy  body  to  decay, 

And  o'er-informed  the  tenement  of  clay, 

are  tinctured  with  scholasticism;  and  Dryden's 
inveterate  attachment  to  the  image  of  circles, 
whether  in  the  poem  on  Lord  Hastings  (11.  27- 
28),  in  the  Heroic  Stanzas  (11.  17-20),  in  Astraa 
Redux  (1.  299),  in  The  Hind  and  the  Panther  (III, 
1.  19),  or  in  Eleanor  a  (1.  273),  betrays  the  fas- 
cination which  the  ancient  forms  exercised  over 
his  imagination.  Finally,  it  was  from  the  schools, 
from  the  disputation,  that  Dryden  learned  to  love 
argument  and  ratiocination.  Swift  called  The 
Hind  and  the  Panther  "a  complete  abstract  of  six- 
teen thousand  schoolmen,  from  Scotus  to  Bellar- 
mine."  Here  again  it  was  form,  not  content,  that 
Dryden  enriched  himself  with.  His  arguments 
often  are  not  without  serious  flaw;  but  his  manner 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  POET  17 

is  impeccable.  He  discovered  which  gestures  con- 
vince; he  acquired  "the  air  of  proving  something." 
Like  Ovid  in  the  rhetorical  schools  of  Rome,  learn- 
ing to  ring  infinite  changes  on  a  theme  in  suasoria 
and  controversies^  Dryden  by  study  and  by  in- 
stinct developed  an  unexampled  power,  so  far  as 
English  poetry  goes,  of  handling  and  turning  over 
ideas  and  beating  them  into  shape  with  the  scant- 
lings of  logic. 

"The  new  philosophy,"  meanwhile,  with  its  new 
outlook  brought  a  new  language;  and  always  it  was 
language  that  interested  Dryden.  Since  Milton's 
days  at  Cambridge  there  had  come  definite  inno- 
vations. Theology  was  being  rationalized,  Ramus 
and  Bacon  and  Descartes  were  replacing  Aristotle,* 
mathematics  and  natural  science  were  in  the  as- 
cendant. The  unwieldly  amalgam  of  sixteenth  cen- 
tury natural  history  was  yielding  to  the  attacks 
of  specialists  in  physics,  chemistry,  and  anatomy. 
Harvey,  Ent,  and  Ward  were  publishing  the  re- 
sults of  their  researches.  Definite  curiosity  about 
sensible  problems  seemed  in  the  way  of  being  satis- 
fied. 

Lowell  thought  science  "the  most  obstinately 
prosy  material."  Yet  the  new  science  was  far  from 
dull  to  Dryden  and  his  kind.  No  laborious  termin- 
ology chilled  their  ardor  and  blunted  their  curios- 
ity, or  forbade  them  to  incorporate  the  new  world 
in  their  conversation  and  their  writing.  Not  that 
they  were  the  first  to  make  use  of  the  material. 
Donne  had  found  science  a  brighter  ornament  for 
verse  than  hackneyed  mythology.  Milton  was  al- 


1 8  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

ready  ruminating  upon  the  cosmic  bearings  of  as- 
tronomy, geography,  and  chemistry.  But  they 
were  the  first  to  play  exultantly  with  both  the  new 
spirit  and  the  new  language.  They  were  frankly 
dilettanti.  The  game  was  expression,  and  the 
chase  was  for  metaphors.  When  Dryden  in  the 
State  of  InnQ&nce  has  Adam  awake  from  his  bed 
oT  moss  and  cry, 

What  am  I?  or  from  whence?  For  that  I  am 
I  know,  because  I  think, 

he  does  not  convince  us  that  he  knows  more  than 
three  words  of  Descartes.  His  astronomy  is  con- 
fused; he  mixes  the  Roman  poets  with  the  Cam- 
bridge cosmologists ;  he  has  no  system.  There  can 
be  no  honest  doubt  that  he  took  a  good  deal  of 
stock  in  astrology;  among  the  papers  at  Oxford  of 
Elias  Ashmole,  the  great  virtuoso  and  curioso,  are 
to  be  found  nativities  of  Dryden  and  his  eldest  son, 
carefully  cast.  At  the  close  of  his  life  he  wrote  to 
his  sons  at  Rome,  ''Towards  the  latter  end  of  this 
month,  September,  Charles  will  begin  to  recover 
his  perfect  health,  according  to  his  nativity,  which, 
casting  it  myself,  I  am  sure  is  true;  and  all  things 
hitherto  have  happened  accordingly  to  the  very 
time  that  I  predicted  them."  He  was  not  a  scien- 
tist. Yet  he  picked  up  the  new  language,  and 
adopted  the  new  airs;  he  established  what  Ma- 
caulay  named  "the  scientific  vocabulary"  in  verse. 
Not  long  after  he  went  to  London,  and  before  he 
had  won  any  notice  by  his  writing  at  all,  in  1662^ 


19 

lie  was  made  a  member  of  the  newly  chartered 
Royal  Society.  The  next  year  he  was  laying  hon- 
est Aristotle  by  with  some  verses  addressed  to  Dr. 
Charleton,  who  had  written  a  book  on  Stonehenge; 

The  longest  tyranny  that  ever  swayed 
Was  that  wherein  our  ancestors  betrayed 
Their  free-born  reason  to  the  Stagirite, 
And  made  his  torch  their  universal  light. 

In  the  same  poem  he  celebrated  the  innovations  of 
Bacon,  Gilbert,  Boyle,  Harvey,  and  Ent.  Three 
years  later  he  inserted  an  apostrophe  to  the  Royal 
Society  in  his  Annus  Mirabilis,  and  put  into  the 
mouth  of  Crites  in  the  Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy 
this  query:  "Is  it  not  evident,  in  these  last  hun- 
dred years,  .  .  .  that  almost  a  new  Nature  has  been 
revealed  to  us? — that  more  errors  of  the  School 
have  been  detected,  more  useful  experiments  in 
philosphy  have  been  made,  more  noble  secrets  in 
optics,  medicine,  anatomy,  astronomy,  discovered, 
than  in  all  those  credulous  and  doting  ages  from 
Aristotle  to  us?" 

The  new  mechanical  conception  of  nature  bore 
bitter  fruit  in  the  domain  of  psychology  and  polit- 
ical science,  where  the  astounding  Hobbes  held 
sway.  It  seemed  to  Samuel  Butler  and  others 
with  less  humor  that  the  Sage  of  Malmesbury, 
though  he  might  conquer  the  Kingdom  of  Dark- 
ness in  a  way  to  satisfy  himself,  would  end  by  ex- 
tinguishing all  the  light  which  the  remainder  of 
mankind  enjoyed.  As  Donne  had  exclaimed  in  the 
Anatomy  of  the  World, 


20  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

[The]  new  philosophy  calls  all  in  doubt; 

The  element  of  fire  is  quite  put  out; 

The  sun  is  lost,  and  th'  earth,  and  no  man's  wit 

Can  well  direct  him  where  to  look  for  it. 

The  deplorable  paradoxes  about  the  selfishness  of 
human  nature  which  the  tutor  of  the  future 
Charles  II  was  propounding  in  the  Treatise  on  Hu- 
man Nature  and  the  Leviathan  during  the  first  two 
years  of  Dryden's  residence  at  Cambridge  were 
destined  to  fascinate  many  a  gilded  youth  after 
the  Restoration,  and  even  to  incline  old  Bishop 
Burnet  "to  be  apt  to  think  generally  the  worst  of 
men  and  of  parties." 

In  the  wake  of  Hobbes  came  Lucretius,  the  fa- 
vorite of  Gassendi  and  Moliere, 

...  to  proclaim  in  English  verse 
No  monarch  rules  the  universe, 

as  Waller  politely  wrote  upon  the  occasion  of 
Evelyn's  translation  in  1656.  The  atoms  of  Lu- 
cretius and  Ovid  became  almost  the  favorite  image 
of  poets  throughout  the  century.  "Blind  chance," 
"the  confused  heap  of  things,"  "atoms  casually 
together  hurled,"  were  phrases  that  always  passed 
current.  The  idea  of  a  world  left  running  by  it- 
self was  poison  to  the  divines  but  food  for  the  ver- 
sifiers. 

Dry  den  announced  in  the  preface  to  Religio 
Laid  that  he  was  "naturally  inclined  to  scepticism 
in  philosophy."  Emphasis  needs  to  be  placed  on 
the  first  word  in  his  phrase;  he  was  by  disposition 
rather  than  by  doctrine  a  sceptic.  He  thought 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  POET  21 

Hobbes  and  Lucretius  very  much  alike  in  a  cer- 
tain "magisterial  authority"  of  utterance.  If  he 
bowed  to  this  authority  in  his  earlier  years,  when 
he  was  at  college,  he  was  disposed  later  on  to 
give  it  no  more  than  casual,  good  natured  recogni- 
tion. He  never  altogether  capitulated  to  any  sys- 
tem of  politics  or  morals  or  aesthetics.  He  was 
born  and  he  died  with  an  Olympian  indifference 
to  principles.  Yet  Hobbes  and  Lucretius  both 
made  powerful,  permanent  impressions  upon  his 
imagination.  It  was  Hobbes  who  inspired  his 
deep  distrust  of  human  beings  in  the  mass  and  his 
lifelong  intolerance  of  movements  that  threat- 
ened to  disturb  the  peace.  Hobbes  gave  him  "the 
reason  and  political  ornaments,"  according  to  the 
authors  of  The  Censure  of  the  Rota,  for  the  Con- 
quest of  Granada,  as  well  as  language  with  which 
to  defend  the  Stuart  kings  in  satire.  The  Levi- 
athan had  blazed  a  sinister  trail  into  the  thicket 
of  human  nature  and  had  revealed  dismaying 
perspectives  in  what  was  taken  for  human  his- 
tory. Dryden  has  much  to  say  about  the  State  of 
Nature.  On  a  few  occasions  he  reverts  with  a 
kind  of  pleasure  to  a  golden  age  among 

those  happy  isles 
Where  in  perpetual  spring  young  Nature  smiles; l 

Or  among 

guiltless  men,  who  danced  away  their  time, 
Fresh  as  their  groves,  and  happy  as  their  clime.  z 

1   To  My  Lord  Chancellor,  11.  135-6. 
1  To  Dr.  Charleton,  11.  13-4. 


22  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

And  he  has  Almanzor  say  in  the  Conquest  of  Gran- 
ada: 

But  know  that  I  alone  am  king  of  me. 
I  am  as  free  as  Nature  first  made  man, 
Ere  the  base  laws  of  servitude  began, 
When  wild  in  woods  the  noble  savage  ran. 

But  most  often  the  prehistoric  rabble  which  he  in- 
vokes is 

.    <r 

Blind  as  the  Cyclops,  and  as  wild  as  he; 
They  owned  a  lawless  savage  liberty, 
Like  that  our  painted  ancestors  so  prized 
Ere  empire's  arts  their  breasts  had  civilized.1 

And  the  State  of  Innocence  ends  upon  a  note  that 
is  cold  and  ruthless,  almost  ominous,  compared 
with  the  undaunted  serenity  that  closes  Paradise 
Lost.  Says  Raphael,  ushering  Adam  and  Eve  out 
into  the  world, 

The  rising  winds  urge  the  tempestuous  air; 
And  on  their  wings  deformed  winter  bear: 
The  beasts  already  feel  the  change;  and  hence 
They  fly  to  deeper  coverts,  for  defense: 
The  feebler  herd  before  the  stronger  run; 
For  now  the  war  of  nature  is  begun. 

There  was  also  something  sinister  about  the  world 
of  Lucretius  as  Dryden  adopted  it;  for  in  his  imag- 
ination he  did  adopt  it.  Times  without  number, 
in  both  his  prose  and  his  verse,  the  atoms  came 
crowding  upon  the  page;  they  were  his  unfailing 

1  Astrcea  Redux,  11.  45-8. 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  POET  23 

conceit.  They  flung  themselves  together  into  a 
"universal  frame,"  a  frame  held  together  not  so 
much  by  spirit  or  will  (as  to  be  sure  Dryden  felt 
bound  each  time  to  maintain)  as  by  some  godless, 
grinding  power  like  music.  In  his  fancy  the  ma- 
chine was  not  to  run  forever.  The  pageant  was  to 
crumble.  Chaos  would  some  day  reign  again. 
But  eternity  promised  him  few  of  the  comforts 
that  it  promised  men  like  Milton.  If  Dryden 
ever  thought  of  eternity  at  all,  he  thought  of  it  as 
very  great  and  empty. 

When  Descartes  for  his  purposes  sharpened  Aris- 
totle's distinction  between  mind  and  matter  he  per- 
formed a  doubtful  service  to  philosophy,  since  more 
than  a  hundred  years  were  required  to  make  it  plain 
that  his  distinction  had  been  academic,  and  that 
mind  and  matter  might  not  after  all  be  mutually 
exclusive.  In  his  own  system  the  exclusions  were 
absolute.  An  analogous  distinction  was  being  re- 
vived and  emphasized  in  aesthetics  during  the  seven- 
teenth century.  In  poetry,  fancy  was  being  set 
against  judgment,  and  although  the  two  were  sup- 
posed to  be  mutually  enriching,  they  were  more 
often  taken  to  destroy  each  other.  This  distinction 
was  of  doubtful  service  to  literature.  As  in  philoso- 
phy the  arid  dualism  of  Descartes  obscured  the 
true  function  of  the  human  spirit,  so  in  literature 
the  war  between  fancy  and  judgment  hindered  the 
true  work  of  the  imagination.  Not  that  poetry  in 
England  suffered  a  total  eclipse,  as  is  often  believed. 
A  very  great  deal  of  brains  and  imagination  went  into 
the  poetry  of  the  latter  seventeenth  and  early  eight- 


24          THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

eenth  centuries.  But  certain  definite  exclusions  were 
made  by  all  who  touched  the  subject  either  as  poets 
or  as  critics,  and  certain  limitations  were  more 
or  less  freely  acknowledged.  Dryden  grew  up  at  a 
time  when  the  air  was  filled  with  many  diverse  strains 
of  verse,  and  no  note  was  predominant.  Yet  as 
he  reached  maturity  he  became  aware  of  some- 
thing that  might  have  been  called  "the  new  po- 
etry." He  came  to  distinguish  four  forward-look- 
ing poets  among  the  throng:  Cowley,  Waller,  Den- 
ham,  and  Davenant.  And  behind  those  Sons  of 
Ben  he  was  able  to  discern  the  forward-peering 
countenance  of  Hobbes. 

The  new  poetry  was  to  be  the  work  of  sober 
wit,  the  issue  of  the  conscious  faculties.  Wit  had 
danced  in  with  the  conceit  early  in  the  century, 
but  it  had  been  tortured  then  as  it  was  not  to  be 
tortured  now.  "Doctor  Donne,"  a  more  fascinat- 
ing man  than  the  Augustans  ever  supposed,  had 
been  "the  greatest  wit,"  said  Dryden  at  a  later 
date,  but  "not  the  best  poet  of  our  nation."  The 
current  of  conceits  which  had  swept  even  Milton 
in  had  not  much  further  to  flow.  "Ingenious 
Cowley! "  cries  Cowper  in  the  Task, 

I  cannot  but  lament  thy  splendid  wit 
Entangled  in  the  cobwebs  of  the  schools. 

Yet  even  Cowley  had  his  clear,  free  vein;  and  the 
cobwebs  that  he  spun  did  not  last  long  past  the 
Restoration.  Dryden,  who  indeed  was  never 
exempt  from  conceits  as  long  as  he  lived,  declared 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  POET  25 

against  them  from  the  first.  If  the  conceit  sur- 
vived in  Augustan  poetry,  it  survived  in  the  cir- 
cumlocution, which  at  least  was  civilized.  The 
new  poets  were  to  have  large  audiences,  and  they 
needed  to  be  understood  when  they  spoke.  As  in 
comedy  wit  was  to  take  the  place  of  "humour," 
and  pungent  criticism  of  society  was  to  supplant 
an  endless  elaboration  of  fantastic  characters,  so 
in  all  verse  there  was  to  be  an  effort  to  speak  a 
language 

Consisting  less  in  words  and  more  in  things: 

A  language  not  affecting  ancient  times, 

Nor  Latin  shreds  by  which  the  pedant  climbs, 

to  use  some  lines  written  to  James  I  by  an  excel- 
lent poet  who  early  anticipated  Dryden's  style, 
Sir  John  Beaumont.  If  the  word  "wisdom"  be 
taken  not  too  seriously,  the  following  passage 
from  Dryden's  prologue  to  (Edipus  may  serve  in- 
directly to  express  the  new  ideal.  Says  Dryden, 
speaking  of  ancient  Greece, 

Then  Sophocles  with  Socrates  did  sit, 
Supreme  in  wisdom  one,  and  one  in  wit; 
And  wit  from  wisdom  differed  not  in  those, 
But  as  't  was  sung  in  verse  or  said  in  prose. 

Eugenius,  in  the  Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy, 
makes  a  triumphant  canvass  of  Dryden's  first 
teachers  in  verse.  The  Greeks  and  Romans,  he 
says,  "can  produce  nothing  ...  so  even,  sweet,  and 
flowing,  as  Mr.  Waller;  nothing  so  majestic,  so 
correct,  as  Sir  John  Denham;  nothing  so  elevated, 
so  copious,  and  full  of  spirit,  as  Mr.  Cowley." 


26          THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

"TThe  darling  of  my  youth,  the  famous  Cowley," 
wrote  Dryden  in  1693,  long  after  he  had  outgrown 
his  young  enthusiasms.  There  had  been  a  time, 
shortly  after  he  left  Cambridge,  when  he  had 
known  Cowley's  work  minutely,  and  had  made 
good  use  of  it.  Cowley  was  a  zealous  scientist. 
He  studied  medicine,  wrote  a  botanical  treatise, 
proposed  a  College  for  the  Advancement  of  Ex- 
perimental Philosophy,  was  admitted  to  the  Royal 
Society,  and  practiced  odes  on  Dr.  Scarborough 
and  Dr.  Harvey.  He  was  interested  in  every- 
thing. He  took  a  naive  delight  in  explication,  and 
loved  to  give  accounts  of  things  in  verse.  His 
mind  was  agile  and  airy,  and  worked  with  a  cer- 
tain dry  animation  that  captivated  the  attention. 
At  times  he  was  a  facile  metrist,  and  always  his 
spirit  was  sweet.  It  is  often  said  that  Dryden's 
early  poems  are  bad  because  they  are  like  Cowley. 
It  is  fair  to  Cowley  to  say  that  if  they  had  been 
exactly  like  him  they  would  not  have  been  so  bad. 
Dryden  approximated  the  plenty  but  not  the 
sprightliness  of  his  elder.  Even  in  that  plenty 
there  were  signs  of  strength.  Dryden's  poem  to 
Dr.  Charleton  follows  closely  after  Cowley's  to 
Mr.  Hobbes  in  its  treatment  of  Aristotle  and  the 
schoolmen.  The  Heroic  Stanzas  and  the  verses  to 
Sir  Robert  Howard  contain  a  generous  propor- 
tion of  scientific  figures  inserted  in  the  Cowley 
manner.  For  years  Dryden  spoke  always  in  the 
warmest  accents  of  his  "master,"  and  it  was  not 
until  his  last  piece  of  criticism  altogether,  the  pref- 
ace to  the  Fables,  that  he  took  pains  to  expose 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  POET  27 

Cowley's  faults.  He  seems  always  to  have  been 
thoroughly  familiar  with  his  poems.  It  has  long 
been  known  that  four  lines  in  Mac  Flecknoe, 

Where  their  vast  courts  the  mother-strumpets  keep, 
And  undisturbed  by  watch  in  silence  sleep.  .  .  . 
Where  unfledged  actors  learn  to  laugh  and  cry, 
And  infant  punks  their  tender  voices  try, 

are  a  close  parody  of  four  in  the  Davideis: 

Where  their  vast  courts  the  mother-waters  keep, 
And  undisturbed  by  moons  in  silence  sleep.  .  .  . 
Beneath  the  dens  where  unfledged  tempests  lie, 
And  infant  winds  their  tender  voices  try; 

it  has  not  been  observed  that  the  famous  portrait 
of  Sha dwell  near  the  beginning  of  Mac  Flecknoe, 

Some  beams  of  wit  on  other  souls  may  fall, 
Strike  through  and  make  a  lucid  interval; 
But  ShadwelPs  genuine  night  admits  no  ray; 
His  rising  fogs  prevail  upon  the  day, 

is  replete  with  echoes  from  an  adjoining  passage  in 
Cowley's  epic: 

There  is  a  place  deep,  wondrous  deep  below, 
Where  genuine  night  and  horror  does  o'erflow;  .  .  . 
Here  no  dear  glimpse  of  the  sun's  lovely  face, 
Strikes  through  the  solid  darkness  of  the  place; 
No  dawning  morn  does  her  kind  reds  display; 
One  slight  weak  beam  would  here  be  thought  the  day. 

Cowley  was  dry,  and  wrote  without  passion. 
Dryden's  tutors  were  all  mild  and  self-contained. 
Mildest  among  them  came  Waller  and  Denham, 


28  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

the  pair  whom  Dryden  began  as  early  as  the  ded- 
ication of  the  Rival  Ladies  in  1664  to  name  to- 
gether, and  whose  twin  fames  for  a  century  were 
the  outcome  of  his  persistent  praise.  The  impor- 
tance of  neither  can  be  over-emphasized.  Dryden 
said  of  Waller,  "Unless  he  had  written,  none  of  us 
could  write,"  and  of  Denham  that  his  Cooper's 
Hill,  "for  the  majesty  of  the  style,  is,  and  ever 
will  be,  the  exact  standard  of  good  writing." 

To  begin  with  Waller.  The  novelty  of  his  num- 
bers will  be  considered  in  another  place.  It  was  the 
novelty  of  his  expression  and  his  processes  that 
charmed  the  wits  who  read  his  first  volume  in  1645, 
and  who  continued  for  forty-two  years  to  hear  oc- 
casions graced  by  his  easy  voice.  He  had  learned 
the  secret  which  Augustan  poets  were  to  need  to 
know,  the  secret  of  writing  with  ease.  His  ease 
was  ease  of  mind  as  well  as  of  meter.  He  was  cool 
and  gracious  at  the  same  time.  He  was  not  per- 
turbed by  his  subjects,  which  indeed  were  never 
really  great — St.  James's  Park,  the  repairing  of 
St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  or  Her  Majesty's  taste  for  tea; 
even  the  wars  he  sung  were  petty  affairs.  He  was 
obvious  and  pleasant,  and  could  in  perfect  self- 
possession  build  up  an  idea  or  a  conceit  in  verse 
that  would  charm  by  its  symmetry.  Thought  in 
him  was  often  fatuous,  but  it  was  never  absent; 
Goldsmith  was  struck  by  his  "strength  of  think- 
ing." When  Dryden  in  1680-1  revised  Sir  William 
Soame's  translation  of  Boileau's  Art  of  Poetry  and 
substituted  English  names  for  the  French,  he  wrote 
"Waller"  for  "Malherbe,"  saying, 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  POET  29 

His  happy  genius  did  our  tongue  refine, 
And  easy  words  with  pleasing  numbers  join. 

"Easy"  and  "pleasing"  were  important  terms  in 
Restoration  criticism  of  verse.  Waller  was  not 
without  his  conceits;  his  complimentary  effusions 
are  full  of  absurdities.  But  he  is  not  shocking;  he 
bathes  his  bizarrerie  in  a  geniality  to  which  no  ex- 
ception can  be  taken.  His  good  will  is  irresistible. 
Dryden  has  not  exaggerated  his  own  debt  to  Waller. 
He  borrowed  many  things,  both  good  and  bad, 
from  the  suave  old  Parliamentarian.  By  consti- 
tution he  was  scarcely  so  agreeable  as  Waller,  but 
he  learned  from  him  the  accent  and  the  diction  of 
affability.  Waller's  favorite  and  most  frequent 
images,  those  of  the  eagle  and  the  halcyon,  Dryden 
calmly  appropriated.  Whenever  Dryden's  early 
panegyrical  tone  is  soft  and  insinuating,  as  it  is  in 
the  poems  to  Charles  II,  the  Lord  Chancellor, 
Lady  Castlemaine,  and  the  Duchess  of  York,  he  is 
speaking  with  Waller's  voice.  And  anyone  who 
will  take  the  trouble  to  read  three  poems  by  Waller 
on  public  occasions,  the  Panegyric  to  my  Lord  Pro- 
tector (1655),  Of  a  War  with  Spain,  and  Fight  at  Sea 
(1656-61),  and  Instructions  to  a  Painter,  for  the 
Drawing  of  the  Posture  and  Progress  of  His  Majes- 
ty's Forces  at  Sea  (1666),  will  no  longer  be  in  doubt 
as  to  whence  Dryden  derived  certain  features  of 
his  Heroic  Stanzas  and  his  Annus  Mirabilis.  The 
dignity  and  the  beauty  of  those  two  poems  are  his 
own;  the  occasional  notes  of  sober  fatuity  are  Wal- 
ler's. 


30          THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Denham's  Cooper's  Hill  owed  its  vogue  largely 
to  Dryden,  who  neglected  no  opportunity  to  praise 
it.  Two  lines  in  that  poem, 

Though  deep,  yet  clear;  though  gentle,  yet  not  dull; 
Strong  without  rage;  without  o'erflowing,  full, 

modelled  by  Denham  on  three  lines  in  Cartwright's 
verses  in  memory  of  Ben  Jonson, 

Low  without  creeping,  high  without  loss  of  wings; 
Smooth,  yet  not  weak,  and  by  a  thorough-care, 
Big  without  swelling,  without  painting  fair, 

became  classic  through  Dryden's  analysis  of  them 
in  his  dedication  of  the  jEneis.  From  Denham 
Dryden  acquired  the  ratiocinative  dignity  which  is 
secured  by  quiet  rhetorical  questions,  restful  aph- 
orisms, and  meditative  enjambement. 

The  volume  which  contained  Sir  William  Dav- 
enant's  Gondibert  (1651)  is  now  interesting  chiefly 
for  its  introductory  matter.  The  epic  which  fol- 
lowed is  important  only  because  it  called  out  poems 
by  Waller  and  Cowley,  and  because  it  needed  the 
elaborate  introduction  of  essays  written  in  Paris  the 
previous  year  by  Davenarrt  and  Hobbes.  These 
four  prefixtures  are  interesting  despite  their  failure 
to  convince  the  world  that  Gondibert  was  either  new 
or  significant.  In  themselves  they  reflected  or  ex- 
pressed new  doctrines  in  poetry  which  were  not 
sterile.  They  prescribed  the  materials  for  the  new 
poetry,  and  they  analyzed  the  psychological  proc- 
esses by  which  it  would  be  produced.  This  volume 
of  1651  was  almost  a  text-book  of  the  new  aesthetics. 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  POET  31 

Waller  and  Cowley  commended  Davenant's  pre- 
occupation with  the  manners  of  men.    Said  Waller: 

Now  to  thy  matchless  book, 
Wherein  those  few  that  can  with  judgment  look, 
May  find  old  love  in  pure  fresh  language  told, 
Like  new-stamped  coin  made  out  of  angel-gold. 
Such  truth  in  love  as  th'  antique  world  did  know, 
In  such  a  style  as  courts  may  boast  of  now; 
Which  no  bold  tales  of  gods  or  monsters  swell, 
But  human  passions  such  as  with  us  dwell. 
Man  is  thy  theme;  his  virtue  or  his  rage 
Drawn  to  the  life  in  each  elaborate  page. 

Cowley  proceeded  in  the  same  tenor: 

Methinks  heroic  poesie  till  now 
Like  some  fantastic  fairy-land  did  show; 
Gods,  devils,  nymphs,  witches,  and  giants'  race, 
And  all  but  man,  in  man's  best  work  had  place. 
Thou  like  some  worthy  knight,  with  sacred  arms, 
Instead  of  those,  dost  man  and  manners  plant, 
The  things  which  that  rich  soil  did  chiefly  want. 

All  this  is  simply  in  recognition  of  Davenant's  own 
pronouncement  that  a  heroic  poem  gives  us  "a 
familiar  and  easy  view  of  ourselves,"  and  of  Hobbes's 
stouter  declaration  that  "the  subject  of  a  poem  is 
the  manners  of  men."  "Of  all  which,"  says  Dry- 
den  in  his  preface  to  Troilus  and  Cressida,  "who- 
soever is  ignorant  does  not  deserve  the  name  of 
poet." 

The  manners  of  men,  then,  are  the  business  of  a 
rjoej.  How  are  his  expression  and  his  imagination 
to  compass  the  manners  of  men?  First  for  the  ex- 


32          THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

pression,  which  must  be  adequate  and  no  more; 
whose  prime  qualities  must  be  "perspicuity,  pro- 
priety, and  decency."  Davenant  and  Hobbes  were 
far  from  eschewing  novelties  and  rarities,  as  will  be 
seen  in  another  chapter;  but  they  insisted  upon 
adequacy  and  propriety.  "There  be  so  many  words 
in  use  at  this  day  in  the  English  tongue,"  writes 
Hobbes,  "that  though  of  magninque  sound,  yet 
(like  the  windy  blisters  of  a  troubled  water)  have 
no  sense  at  all;  and  so  many  others  that  lose  their 
meaning  by  being  ill  coupled,  so  that  it  is  a  hard 
matter  to  avoid  them;  for  having  been  obtruded 
upon  youth  in  the  schools  by  such  as  make  it,  I 
think,  their  business  there  (as  't  is  exprest  by  the 
best  poet  [Davenant] ) 

With  terms  to  charm  the  weak  and  pose  the  wise, 

they  grow  up  with  them,  and  gaining  reputation 
with  the  ignorant,  are  not  easily  shaken  off.  To 
this  palpable  darkness  I  may  also  add  the  ambi- 
tious obscurity  of  expressing  more  than  is  perfectly 
conceived,  or  perfect  conception  in  fewer  words 
than  it  requires,  which  expressions,  though  they 
have  had  the  honor  to  be  called  strong  lines,  are  in- 
deed no  better  than  riddles,  and,  not  only  to  the 
reader  but  also  after  a  little  time  to  the  writer  him- 
self, dark  and  troublesome."  That  is,  the  poet 
should  avoid  congested  and  crabbed  utterance, 
should  choose  his  epithets  sanely,  and  should  al- 
ways be  sure  that  he  knows  himself  what  he  is  say- 
ing. Dryden  draws  the  same  inferences,  in  the 
State  of  Innocence, 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  POET  33 

From  words  and  things,  ill  sorted  and  misjoined; 
The  anarchy  of  thought,  and  chaos  of  the  mind. 

Hobbes  went  about  in  an  orderly  way  to  dis- 
sect the  imagination  and  ascertain  its  workings. 
"Time  and  Education  begets  Experience;  Experience 
begets  Memory;  Memory  begets  Judgement  and 
Fancy.  .  .  .  The  Ancients  therefore  fabled  not 
absurdly,  in  making  Memory  the  Mother  of  the 
Muses."  There  was  no  mystery  here  at  all.  Imagi- 
nation is  a  makeshift.  If  we  could  keep  the  whole 
world  fresh  and  vivid  about  us  all  our  days  there 
would  be  no  call  for  Fancy  in  the  metaphysics  of 
true  enjoyment.  The  life  of  the  imagination  is  a 
life  of  sheer  pretense.  "Imagination,"  runs  a  sen- 
tence in  Hobbes's  Physics,  "is  nothing  else  but 
sense  decaying,  or  weakened,  by  the  absence  of  the 
object."  This  refusal  to  credit  the  imagination 
with  creative  power,  this  insistence  upon  reducing 
it  to  its  lowest  terms  and  making  of  it  a  mechanical 
device  for  reproducing  experience  as  such,  is  cru- 
cial in  the  history  of  English  poetry.  When  Bacon 
had  examined  the  mental  processes  of  the  poet  in 
the  Advancement  of  Learning  he  had  not,  to  be  sure, 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  poets  are  divine,  or 
mad;  but  he  had  assigned  to  them  a  function  more 
or  less  creative,  which  was  "to  give  some  shadow  of 
satisfaction  to  the  mind  of  man  in  those  points 
wherein  the  nature  of  things  doth  deny  it,  the  world 
being  in  proportion  inferior  to  the  soul."  Now 
Hobbes  ignored  the  transforming  power  in  favor  of 
the  recording  power.  "For  Memory  is  the  World 
(though  not  really,  yet  so  as  in  a  looking  glass)  in 


34          THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

which  the  Judgment,  the  severer  Sister,  busieth 
herself  in  a  grave  and  rigid  examination  of  all  the 
parts  of  Nature,  and  in  registering  by  letters  their 
order,  causes,  uses,  differences,  and  resemblances; 
whereby  the  Fancy,  when  any  work  of  Art  is  to  be 
performed,  finding  her  materials  at  hand  and  pre- 
pared for  use,  needs  no  more  than  a  swift  motion 
over  them,  that  what  she  wants,  and  is  there  to  be 
had,  may  not  lie  too  long  unespied."  Which  is  to 
say,  what  is  true  yet  is  not  the  whole  truth,  that 
the  best  poet  is  he  who  has  the  best  memory.  Ten 
years  before,  Milton,  in  his  Reason  of  Church  Gov- 
ernment, had  confided  to  "any  knowing  reader" 
that  the  great  work  which  he  was  setting  out  to  do 
would  be  a  work  not  "to  be  obtained  by  the  invoca- 
tion of  Dame  Memory  and  her  Siren  daughters, 
but  by  devout  prayer  to  that  eternal  Spirit  who  can 
enrich  with  all  utterance  and  knowledge."  And 
twenty-four  years  after  Gondibert,  Milton's  nephew, 
Edward  Phillips,  in  the  preface  to  his  Theatrum 
Poetarum,  was  to  hold  a  brief  for  "true  native  Po- 
etry" as  against  mere  "wit,  ingenuity,  and  learning 
in  verse."  But  Hobbist  psychology  was  as  potent  as 
Hobbist  politics,  and  it  was  not  until  a  century  or 
more  had  passed  that  any  really  philosophical 
attack  was  made  upon  Dame  Memory's  position. 
It  was  in  the  wake  of  such  an  attack  that  Blake,  in 
the  world  of  painting,  explained  all  of  what  he  con- 
sidered had  been  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds'  critical  errors 
by  adducing  the  one  mistaken  conception  that 
"originates  in  the  Greeks  calling  the  Muses  daugh- 
ters of  Memory."  It  was  in  rebuttal  of  theories  like 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  POET  35 

those  of  Hobbes  that  Wordsworth  wrote:  "Imag- 
ination has  no  reference  to  images  that  are  merely 
a  faithful  copy,  existing  in  the  mind,  of  absent  ex- 
ternal objects;  but  is  a  word  of  higher  import,  de- 
noting operations  of  the  mind  upon  those  objects, 
and  processes  of  creation  and  composition." 

All  this  does  not  mean  that  Dryden  and  others 
who  went  to  school  to  Hobbes  did  not  write  great, 
amazing  poetry.  It  only  explains  why  they  failed 
to  write  poetry  of  a  certain  kind.  Wonder  and 
brooding  reverie  were  simply  not  of  their  world. 
They  transformed  nothing;  the  divine  illusion  was 
not  for  them.  They  created  and  composed  endur- 
ing monuments  of  art,  but  not  in  Wordsworth's 
way.  They  were  not  at  all  times  aware  of  their 
limitations.  Dryden,  as  we  shall  see,  struggled  a 
long  while  to  trample  them  down.  He  spoke  often, 
in  common  with  his  contemporaries,  of  the  furor 
poeticus;  he  championed  poetic  license;  and  he 
tried  to  write  like  Shakespeare.  But  like  his  con- 
temporaries he  was  bound  by  triple  steel.  He  had 
to  learn  to  be  great  in  his  own  way. 

Taine,  having  no  reason  to  doubt  the  notion 
current  in  his  time  that  Dryden  had  stayed  on  three 
years  at  Cambridge  after  taking  his  Bachelor's  de- 
gree, proceeds:  "Here  you  see  the  regular  habits  of 
an  honorable  and  well-to-do  family,  the  discipline  of 
a  connected  and  solid  education,  the  taste  for  clas- 
sical and  exact  studies.  Such  circumstances  an- 
nounce and  prepare,  not  an  artist,  but  a  man  of 
letters."  If  to  be  an  artist  is  to  be  devoted  to  an 
art,  and  if  to  be  a  true  artist  is  to  have  that  devo- 


36  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

tion  not  only  continue  but  increase  through  each 
year  of  a  long  life,  then  Dryden  was  truly  an  artist, 
and  Taine  is  unjust.  Dryden's  devotion  cannot  be 
called  into  question.  Whether  or  not  the  legend  be 
accurate  that  he  was  "too  roving  and  active  to  con- 
fine himself  to  college  life"  and  that  he  hastened  to 
set  himself  up  in  London,  it  is  plain  that  he,  like 
Ovid,  would  sooner  or  later  have  found  it  impos- 
sible to  keep  out  of  poetry.  Whenever  his  career 
began,  it  engrossed  him  solely  and  entirely.  In 
later  years  he  liked  to  review  this  career;  his  con- 
ception of  it  was  dramatic,  if  not  theatrical.  He 
saw  himself  on  a  great  stage,  prominent,  almost 
alone.  He  carried  with  him  to  London,  and  always 
kept  by  him  there,  an  "adamantine  confidence,"  as 
Dr.  Johnson  put  it,  not  simply  in  himself,  for  he 
knew  what  modesty  was,  but  in  the  powers  which 
study  and  practice  had  convinced  him  were  his. 
Pride  of  profession,  scorn  of  competitors,  devotion 
to  his  trade  sustained  him.  Goldsmith  made  his 
way  into  the  mid-eighteenth  century  literary  world 
by  a  good-humored  unconventionality  that  brought 
relief  to  sufferers  from  the  prevailing  gentilities  and 
rotundities.  Dryden,  also  without  violence  of  blus- 
ter, forced  himself  upon  his  world  through  sheer 
display  of  confidence  and  a  large,  steady  assump- 
tion of  authority.  There  was  a  growing  demand 
for  poetry  which  could  be  read  and  generally  dis- 
cussed. Dryden  believed  that  he  could  supply  the 
smoothest  and  most  powerful  variety.  He  was  not 
long  in  convincing  London  that  he  was  right. 

It  was  brought  against  Dryden  by  Shadwell,  in 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  POET  37 

The  Medal  of  John  Bayes,  that  he  had  served  as  a 
hack  to  Herringman  the  bookseller  during  his  first 
few  years  in  London,  writing  "prefaces  to  books  for 
meat  and  drink."  It  is  probable  that  Shadwell  ex- 
aggerated the  meanness  of  the  relation,  if  it  existed 
at  all.  Dryden's  private  income  was  not  large,  and 
he  must  have  turned  at  an  early  stage  to  writing  for 
money,  without,  indeed,  the  spiritual  support  of 
Dr.  Johnson's  avowal  that  no  man  except  a  block- 
head ever  wrote  for  anything  else.  Any  connec- 
tion with  Herringman  in  these  years  of  his  appren- 
ticeship would  have  been  valuable  in  that  it  would 
have  placed  him  in  one  of  the  main  currents  of  po- 
etic production,  Herringman  being  almost  the  chief 
publisher  of  poems  and  plays  at  the  Restoration. 
Somewhere,  at  least,  Dryden  was  learning  what  was 
being  written,  and  coming  to  feel  at  home  in  society; 
without  which  knowledge  and  feeling  he  could  not 
have  gone  very  far. 

Personally,  Dryden  seems  never  to  have  prepos- 
sessed anyone.  His  youth  had  not  been  precocious, 
and  his  maturity  found  him  more  mellow  than 
splendid.  He  was  genial  in  his  old  age,  without  any 
great  allowance  of  spontaneous  humor.  His  mind 
always  remained  warm  and  strong.  Pope  told 
Spence  that  he  "was  not  a  very  genteel  man;  he  was 
intimate  with  none  but  poetical  men."  He  pretended 
to  be  nothing  other  than  what  above  all  things  he 
was,  a  writer.  He  did  not  profess  to  be  a  hero;  he 
disliked  holding  himself  rigid.  "Stiffness  of  opin- 
ion," he  wrote  in  the  dedication  of  Don  Sebastian,  "is 
the  effect  of  pride,  and  not  of  philosophy.  .  .  .  The 


38          THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

ruggedness  of  a  stoic  is  only  a  silly  affectation  of  be- 
ing a  god.  .  .  .  True  philosophy  is  certainly  of  a  more 
pliant  nature,  and  more  accommodated  to  human 
use.  ...  A  wise  man  will  never  attempt  an  impossi- 
bility." Dryden's  inconsistencies  have  generally  been 
deplored.  But  it  is  precisely  to  his  unending  powers 
of  renewal  that  we  owe  that  serenity  and  that  fresh- 
ness in  which  he  never  fails  us.  "As  I  am  a  man," 
he  told  the  Earl  of  Mulgrave  in  1676,  in  the  dedica- 
tion of  Aureng-Zebe,  "I  must  be  changeable;  and 
sometimes  the  gravest  of  us  all  are  so,  even  upon 
ridiculous  accidents.  Our  minds  are  perpetually 
wrought  on  by  the  temperament  of  our  bodies; 
which  makes  me  suspect  they  are  nearer  allied,  than 
either  our  philosophers  or  school-divines  will  allow 
them  to  be.  .  .  .  An  ill  dream,  or  a  cloudy  day,  has 
power  to  change  this  wretched  creature,  who  is  so 
proud  of  a  reasonable  soul,  and  make  him  think 
what  he  thought  not  yesterday/' 


II 

FALSE  LIGHTS 

Dr.  Johnson's  brilliant  example  seems  nearly  to 
have  established  for  all  time  the  procedure  of  per- 
sons who  would  criticise  the  poetry  of  Dryden.  The 
procedure  consists  in  moving  swiftly  through  his 
works,  line  by  line  and  page  by  page,  noting  down 
what  passages  are  in  shocking  taste  and  what  pas- 
sages are  unexceptionable,  and  at  the  end  qualify- 
ing on  the  basis  of  the  first  the  praise  which  ought 
naturally  to  fall  to  the  second.  There  has  been 
good  reason  for  this.  No  critic  has  felt  that  he 
could  afford  to  commend  Dryden  in  general  with- 
out proving  that  he  had  taken  into  account  the 
worst  of  him  in  particular.  No  critic  has  been  wil- 
ling to  go  on  record  as  in  any  way  approving  the 
more  flagant  stanzas  of  the  Annus  Mirabilis^  the 
more  impossible  speeches  of  the  heroic  plays,  or  the 
more  meretricious  portions  of  the  Virgil  and  other 
journey-work.  Such  caution  has  been  warranted 
by  the  fact  that  Dryden  is  more  unequal  than  al- 
most any  English  poet  who  has  written  volumin- 
ously. But  now  it  seems  worth  while  to  proceed 
a  little  further  and  ask  whether  Dryden  held  any 
theories  which  might  have  been  responsible  for  the 
obvious  defects  in  his  product.  For  it  is  evident 
that  the  unhappy  passages  to  which  exception  has 


40  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

invariably  been  taken  are  not  passages  wherein  the 
poet's  attention  seems  to  have  lagged,  or  his  spirits 
drooped.  They  are  rather,  in  fact,  his  most  careful 
and  ambitious  performances;  Dryden  never  dozed. 
Nor  can  they  be  explained  as  indiscretions  of  youth. 
They  are  found  everywhere  throughout  his  works, 
from  first  to  last.  It  is  plain  that  Dryden  was  fol- 
lowing false  lights  when  he  committed  his  offenses 
against  taste.  Either  he  was  pursuing  ends  which 
by  nature  he  was  unqualified  to  reach,  he  was  at- 
tempting the  impossible,  he  was  speaking  a  lan- 
guage which  was  not  instinctive;  or  he  was  reach- 
ing ends  which  were  hardly  worth  reaching,  he  was 
sedulously  perfecting  a  language  which  though 
native  was  not  gauged  for  sterling  utterance.  Good 
literature  is  the  effect  of  adequate  form  applied  to 
genuine  material.  The  poetry  in  Dryden  which  is 
not  good  can  be  explained  by  errors  which  he  made 
first  in  choosing  his  material  and  second  in  culti- 
vating his  form.  On  the  one  hand,  false  lights  led 
him  to  employ  two  kinds  of  materials  which  in  his 
case  were  spurious :  first,  the  materials  of  the  fancy, 
in  works  like  Annus  Mirabilis;  second,  the  mate- 
rials of  the  human  passions,  in  works  like  the  heroic 
plays  and  the  tragedies.  The  results  were  absur- 
dity and  bathos.  On  the  other  hand,  false  lights 
led  him  to  give  excessive  attention  to  the  form  of 
his  verse  at  times  when  the  matter  was  of  little  im- 
port, as  in  the  Virgil.  The  results  were  artificiality 
and  monotony.  The  purpose  of  the  present  chapter 
is  to  follow  Dryden  as  he  pursues  his  wandering 
fires,  and  to  sweep  away  the  rubbish  which  he  leaves 


FALSE  LIGHTS  41 

behind  him.  Only  after  that  is  done  can  we  take 
up  in  good  conscience  his  genuine  performances  be- 
fore the  true  flame. 

When  Hobbes  and  Davenant  separated  Fancy 
from  Judgment  and  sent  it  off  to  play  alone,  they 
condemned  it  to  dull  company.  Their  aesthetics, 
in  setting  reason  over  against  imagination,  did  rea- 
son no  great  service  and  did  imagination  real  harm. 
Dryden  belonged  on  the  side  of  the  so-called  reason. 
He  was  not  a  child  of  fancy;  he  never  lived  what  is 
often  too  glibly  termed  the  life  of  the  imagination. 
His  true  home  was  the  house  of  Judgment,  and  his 
true  game  was  the  adult  game  of  common  sense. 
But  he  was  given  to  experimenting.  He  was  cu- 
rious, to  begin  with,  to  know  all  that  could  be  known 
about  Fancy,  whom  Hobbes  and  Davenant  had  de- 
scribed as  sprightly  and  fair.  "When  she  seemeth 
to  fly  from  one  Indies  to  the  other,"  said  Hobbes, 
"and  from  Heaven  to  Earth,  and  to  penetrate  into 
the  hardest  matter  and  obscurest  places,  into  the 
future  and  into  herself,  and  all  this  in  a  point  of 
time,  the  voyage  is  not  very  great,  herself  being  all 
she  seeks,  and  her  wonderful  celerity  consisteth  not 
so  much  in  motion  as  in  copious  Imagery  discreetly 
ordered  and  perfectly  registered  in  the  memory." 
"Wit,"  said  Davenant,  meaning  Fancy,  "is  the  labo- 
rious and  the  lucky  resultances  of  thought.  ...  It  is 
a  web  consisting  of  the  subtlest  threads;  and  like 
that  of  the  spider  is  considerately  woven  out  of  our 
selves.  ...  Wit  is  not  only  the  luck  and  labour,  but 
also  the  dexterity  of  thought,  rounding  the  world, 
like  the  Sun,  with  unimaginable  motion,  and  bringing 


42  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

swiftly  home  to  the  memory  universal  surveys." 
No  description  could  have  been  more  alluring;  it  is 
no  wonder  that  Dryden  yielded  and  followed  Fancy 
for  a  time.  The  two  preceptors  also  conveyed  hints 
as  to  the  kind  of  language  which  the  creature  spoke. 
To  write  with  fancy,  said  Hobbes,  one  must  "know 
much."  A  sign  of  knowing  much  "is  novelty  of  ex- 
pression, and  pleaseth  by  excitation  of  the  mind;  for 
novelty  causeth  admiration,  and  admiration  curios- 
ity, which  is  a  delightful  appetite  of  knowledge."  To 
write  with  wit,  said  Davenant,  is  to  bring  truth  home 
"through  unfrequented  and  new  ways,  and  from  the 
most  remote  shades,  by  representing  Nature,  though 
not  in  an  affected,  yet  in  an  unusual  dress."  That  is, 
conceits  were  to  be  abjured,  but  dulness  was  to  be 
avoided  at  all  costs. 

It  seems  certain  that  Dryden  was  thinking  of 
Davenant's  happy  phrases  when  in  the  preface  to 
Annus  Mirabilis  he  wrote:  "The  composition  of  all 
poems  is,  or  ought  to  be,  of  wit;  and  wit  in  the  poet, 
or  wit  writing,  (if  you  will  give  me  leave  to  use  a 
School  distinction),  is  no  other  than  the  faculty  of 
imagination  in  the  writer,  which,  like  a  nimble  span- 
iel, beats  over  and  ranges  through  the  field  of  mem- 
ory, till  it  springs  the  quarry  it  hunted  after;  or, 
without  metaphor,  which  searches  over  all  the  mem- 
ory for  the  species  or  ideas  of  those  things  which  it 
designs  to  represent."  Then,  as  now,  it  seems  to 
have  been  difficult  to  speak  of  the  faculties  in  other 
than  figurative  terms.  Dryden  here  compares  wit 
to  a  spaniel;  elsewhere  he  declares  that  the  lan- 
guage of  the  French  "is  not  strung  with  sinews  like 


FALSE  LIGHTS  43 

our  English;  it  has  the  nimbleness  of  a  greyhound, 
but  not  the  bulk  and  body  of  a  mastiff."  The  dog 
was  not  a  pretty  image,  perhaps,  but  it  served  Dry- 
den's  purpose.  Dryden  confessed  himself  capti- 
vated by  Davenant's  own  wit.  "He  was  a  man  of 
quick  and  piercing  imagination,"  he  said  in  the  pref- 
ace to  the  Tempest,  in  the  writing  of  which  he  had 
been  assisted  by  Davenant  the  next  year  after 
Annus  Mirabilis.  "In  the  time  I  writ  with  him, 
I  had  the  opportunity  to  observe  somewhat  more 
nearly  of  him,  than  I  had  formerly  done.  ...  I 
found  him  then  of  so  quick  a  fancy,  that  nothing  was 
proposed  to  him,  on  which  he  could  not  suddenly 
produce  a  thought  extremely  pleasant  and  surpris- 
ing. .  .  .  And  as  his  fancy  was  quick,  so  likewise 
were  the  products  of  it  remote  and  new  ...  his  im- 
aginations were  such  as  could  not  easily  enter  into 
any  other  man."  The  words  "quick,"  "piercing," 
and  "surprising"  should  be  noted,  because  they  were 
much  in  the  mode  whenever  the  poetic  faculties  were 
being  analyzed.  Shadwell,  when  he  was  still  friendly, 
even  used  them  to  describe  Dryden. 

"Quick"  was  not  the  word  for  Dryden's  fancy. 
Davenant's  own  adjective,  "laborious,"  fits  better. 
In  the  early  occasional  poems  there  is  no  surpris- 
ing facility  of  phrase  or  illustration.  In  no  piece 
did  Dryden  ever  display  a  happy  gift  for  turning  up 
images.  He  speaks  from  time  to  time  of  difficul- 
ties encountered  in  curbing  a  luxuriant  fancy.  But 
it  is  plain  that  the  difficulties  were  never  really 
great.  There  are  times  when,  as  Dr.  Johnson  has 
it,  "he  seems  to  look  round  him  for  images  which 


44  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

he  cannot  find."  His  imagination  is  not  bounding, 
or  fertile;  he  proceeds  painfully  to  scour  the  surface 
of  life  for  allusions.  His  spaniel  does  not  frisk;  it 
must  be  beaten  and  driven.  To  use  his  own  words 
in  another  connection,  "The  fancy,  memory,  and 
judgment  are  .  .  .  extended  (like  so  many  limbs) 
upon  the  rack;  all  of  them  reaching  with  their  utmost 
stress  at  nature."  The  net  result  is  not  a  pretty  or  a 
pleasantly  variegated  pattern;  "'tis  like  an  orange 
stuck  with  cloves,"  to  fall  back  again  upon  Buck- 
ingham in  the  Rehearsal. 

Annus  MirabiliSj  the  locus  classicus  of  Dryden's 
"wit-writing,"  "seems  to  be  the  work  of  a  man," 
says  Macaulay,  "who  could  never,  by  any  possi- 
bility, write  poetry."  It  is  better  to  call  it  the  work 
of  a  man  who  could  never,  by  any  possibility,  write 
a  certain  kind  of  poetry — the  luxuriant,  splendid 
kind  that  is  studded  with  significant  allusions.  No 
swarm  of  ideas  has  beset  the  imagination  of  Dry- 
den  here.  He  has  had  to  make  an  effort  for  every 
image,  proceeding  with  an  almost  childlike  serious- 
ness that  is  oddly  accentuated  by  the  halting  ca- 
dence of  his  heroic  stanza.  For  most  of  his  happier 
strokes  he  has  gone  to  the  classics.  He  is  proud  to 
admit  in  his  preface  that  many  of  his  images  are 
from  Virgil,  and  his  notes  acknowledge  debts  not 
only  to  Virgil  but  to  Petronius,  Tacitus,  Pliny,  Sta- 
tius,  Horace,  and  Ovid  as  well.  His  notes  also  fur- 
nish scientific  explanations  for  the  more  obscure 
allusions  in  the  poem.  Wishing  in  the  third  stanza 
to  say  that  the  Dutch  have  had  the  good  fortune  to 
discover  jewels  in  the  East  Indies,  he  has  written, 


FALSE  LIGHTS  45 

For  them  alone  the  heavens  had  kindly  heat; 
In  eastern  quarries  ripening  precious  dew. 

To  this  he  appends  a  note:  "Precious  stones  at 
first  are  dew,  condensed  and  hardened  by  the  warmth 
of  the  sun  or  subterranean  fires."  His  images  from 
the  classics  are  generally  happy.  It  is  when  he 
draws  upon  his  own  resources,  or,  which  is  little 
better,  draws  upon  Waller,  that  he  proves  once  and 
for  all  that  his  career  must  lie  another  way.  Cer- 
tain stanzas  have  been  quoted  ad  nauseam.  Many 
remain. 

On  high-raised  decks  the  haughty  Belgians  ride, 
Beneath  whose  shade  our  humble  frigates  go: 

Such  port  the  elephant  bears,  and  so  defied 
By  the  rhinoceros  her  unequal  foe. 

By  viewing  Nature,  Nature's  handmaid  Art 

Makes  mighty  things  from  small  beginnings  grow; 

Thus  fishes  first  to  shipping  did  impart 

Their  tale  the  rudder,  and  their  head  the  prow. 

The  gravity  with  which  in  these  and  similar  cases 
the  last  two  lines  of  a  stanza  are  made  to  serve  up 
an  absurd  simile  for  garnishing  the  first  two  is  the 
most  lamentable  feature  of  Annus  Mirabilis.  The 
attention  is  drawn  down  full  upon  the  unfortunate 
comparison,  and  Dryden  has  no  way  to  conceal  his 
fundamental  weakness.  A  few  figures  are  excellent; 
as  when  Prince  Rupert  comes  upon  the  scene, 

And  his  loud  guns  speak  thick  like  angry  men. 
The  Dutch  ships  retire,  awed  by  the  British  cannon: 


46          THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

So  reverently  men  quit  the  open  air 

When  thunder  speaks  the  angry  gods  abroad. 

But  Dryden's  strenuous  efforts  have  thrown  the 
balance  the  other  way,  and  have  made  it  plain,  not 
that  he  was  incapable  of  a  single  happy  image,  but 
that  he  was  incapable  of  measuring  his  own  success. 
Pepys  took  Annus  Mirabilis  home  with  him  from  a 
book  stall,  and  found  it  "a  very  good  poem."  It  is 
a  spirited  poem,  and  it  is  an  admirable  poem  when- 
ever Dryden  forgets  his  spaniel  long  enough  to 
speak  with  the  purely  metrical  rush  and  emphasis 
which  were  eventually  to  win  him  his  position  in 
English  verse: 

There  was  the  Plymouth  squadron  new  come  in, 
Which  in  the  Straits  last  winter  was  abroad; 

Which  twice  on  Biscay's  working  bay  had  been, 
And  on  the  midland  sea  the  French  had  awed. 

Old  expert  Allen,  loyal  all  along, 

Famed  for  his  action  on  the  Smyrna  fleet; 

And  Holmes,whose  name  shall  live  in  epic  song 
While  music  numbers,  or  while  verse  has  feet; 

Now,  anchors  weighed,  the  seamen  shout  so  shrill, 
That  heaven,  and  earth,  and  the  wide  ocean  rings; 

A  breeze  from  westward  waits  their  sails  to  fill, 
And  rests  in  those  high  beds  his  downy  wings. 

Annus  Mirabilis  is  by  no  means  the  first  or  last 
poem  in  which  Dryden  reveals  a  fatal  want  of  tact 
and  subtlety  in  the  use  of  figures.  From  his  earliest 
piece,  that  on  Lord  Hastings,  through  the  pane- 
gyrics written  at  the  Restoration,  through  the 
Threnodia  Augustalis,  through  the  Britannia  Redi- 


FALSE  LIGHTS  47 

viva,  through  the  Eleonora,  to  his  last  translation 
from  Ovid,  he  pursues  with  heavy  steps  the  flashing 
heels  of  fancy.  In  Ovid,  it  may  be  remarked,  he 
found  a  genius  who  invariably  inspired  him  to  ex- 
cesses. Ovid's  inexhaustible  fund  of  grotesque  and 
tasteless  yet  clear-cut  scenes  furnished  Dryden 
with  dubious  riches  which  he  never  failed  to  make 
the  most  of,  and  which  he  could  not  have  embel- 
lished had  he  tried. 

If  Dryden  should  not  be  expected  to  compete 
with  other  poets  on  the  score  of  delicacy  in  simile 
and  metaphor,  much  less  should  he  be  required  to 
display  his  powers  of  passionate  utterance  in  drama 
and  narrative.  Here  he  is  in  competition  with 
Shakespeare  and  the  tragic  poets  of  Greece,  and 
here  he  fails  once  again  to  prove  that  he  possesses 
discrimination.  Not  that  he  lacks  assurance.  No 
poet  has  talked  at  greater  length  about  the  pas- 
sions, or  about  "sublimity."  Yet  no  great  poet  has 
managed  to  acquire  a  firmer  reputation  as  a  bungler 
in  these  departments.  It  is  another  case  of  a  man 
working  with  materials  which  are  not  gauged  for 
him,  and  which  to  a  certain  extent  are  irreconcilable 
wkh  the  whole  temper  of  his  time. 

Dryden  lacks  that  organic  conception  of  man  and 
nature  which  gives  what  is  called  insight.  He  can- 
not compress  a  large  amount  of  emotional  expe- 
rience into  a  single  phrase.  He  is  virtually  barren  of 
illuminating  comments  on  human  life  which  move 
a  reader  to  take  new  account  of  himself.  His  passages 
on  the  soul  are  foolish,  treating  importantly  as  they 
do  of  something  which  is  not  important  to  him.  And 


48          THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

the  pessimistic  soliloquies  which  the  characters  in 
his  plays  deliver  on  the  subjects  of  fate  and  decep- 
tion are  for  the  most  part  trash,  though  not  a  few  of 
them  have  been  quoted  to  prove  that  Dryden  was  a 
critic  of  life.  The  following  lines  from  Aureng-Zebe 
are  compact  and  bright: 

When  I  consider  life,  'tis  all  a  cheat; 

Yet,  fooled  with  hope,  men  favor  the  deceit; 

Trust  on,  and  think  tomorrow  will  repay; 

Tomorrow's  falser  than  the  former  day; 

Lies  worse;  and  while  it  says  we  shall  be  blest 

With  some  new  joys,  cuts  off  what  we  possesst. 

Strange  cozenage!    None  would  live  past  years  again, 

Yet  all  hope  pleasure  in  what  yet  remain; 

Arid  from  the  dregs  of  life  think  to  receive 

What  the  first  sprightly  running  could  not  give. 

I'm  tired  with  waiting  for  this  chemic  gold, 

Which  fools  us  young,  and  beggars  us  when  old. 

Yet  there  is  nothing  appalling  in  their  revelation; 
and  their  felicity  need  disturb  no  one.  They  have 
done  Dry  den's  reputation  in  the  main  more  harm 
than  good  by  being  so  often  brought  forward  in  a 
hopeless  cause. 

"It  requires  Philosophy,"  said  Dryden,  "as  well 
as  Poetry,  to  sound  the  depths  of  all  the  passions; 
what  they  are  in  themselves,  and  how  they  are  to  be 
provoked."  Dryden  did  a  great  deal  of  experi- 
menting in  the  depths  he  speaks  of.  Having  little 
or  no  intuition,  and  being  without  discrimination, 
he  was  almost  never  successful.  He  had  a  lasting 
curiosity  concerning  what  he  called  "those  enthusi- 
astic parts  of  poetry"  which  deal  with  love  and  hate, 


FALSE  LIGHTS  49 

disaster  and  death.  In  the  heroic  plays,  in  the  trag- 
edies, and  in  the  translations  of  classical  narratives 
he  labored  to  render  desperate  actions  in  fitting 
speech,  remembering  that  the  "sublimest  subjects 
ought  to  be  adorned  with  the  sublimest  .  .  .  expres- 
sions." The  results  can  rarely  be  placed  to  his 
credit.  In  the  first  part  of  the  Conquest  of  Granada, 
the  haughty  Almanzor,  after  looking  fixedly  for  a 
moment  at  Almahide's  face,  which  she  has  just  un- 
veiled, turns  aside  and  utters  this  humiliated  con- 
fession : 

I'm  pleased  and  pained,  since  first  her  eyes  I  saw, 

As  I  were  stung  with  some  tarantula. 

Arms,  and  the  dusty  field,  I  less  admire, 

And  soften  strangely  in  some  new  desire; 

Honour  burns  in  me  not  so  fiercely  bright, 

But  pale  as  fires  when  mastered  by  the  light; 

Even  while  I  speak  and  look,  I  change  yet  more, 

And  now  am  nothing  that  I  was  before. 

I'm  numbed,  and  fixed,  and  scarce  my  eye-balls  move; 

I  fear  it  is  the  lethargy  of  love! 

'Tis  he;  I  feel  him  now  in  every  part; 

Like  a  new  lord  he  vaunts  about  my  heart; 

Surveys,  in  state,  each  corner  of  my  breast, 

While  poor  fierce  I,  that  was,  am  dispossessed. 

At  the  end  of  Aureng-Zebe,  Nourmahal,  distracted 
with  poison  she  has  swallowed,  cries  out  in  the  face 
of  death: 

I  burn,  I  more  than  burn;  I  am  all  fire. 

See  how  my  mouth  and  nostrils  flame  expire! 

I'll  not  come  near  myself 


So          THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Now  I'm  a  burning  lake,  it  rolls  and  flows; 
I'll  rush,  and  pour  it  all  upon  my  foes. 
Pull,  pull  that  reverend  piece  of  timber  near; 
Throw  't  on — 'tis  dry — 'twill  burn — 
Ha,  ha!  how  my  old  husband  crackles  there! 
Keep  him  down,  keep  him  down:  turn  him  about; 
I  know  him;  he'll  but  whizz,  and  straight  go  out. 
Fan  me,  you  winds;  What,  not  one  breath  of  air? 
I  burn  them  all,  and  yet  have  flames  to  spare. 
Quench  me:  Pour  on  whole  rivers.     'Tis  in  vain; 
Morat  stands  there  to  drive  them  back  again; 
With  those  huge  bellows  in  his  hands  he  blows 
New  fire  into  my  head;  my  brain-pan  glows. 

These  speeches  are  from  the  heroic  plays,  which  in 
some  measure  were  licensed  to  rave.  Yet)  with  the 
one  exception  of  All  for  Lovf,  the  maturest  of  the 
tragedies,  those  which  are  supposed  to  have  been 
conceived  in  better  taste  under  Greek,  French,  and 
Shakespearian  influences  are  everywhere  marred 
by  mortal  extravagances.  Dorax,  in  Don  Sebastian, 
believes  he  is  poisoned: 

I'm  strangely  discomposed; 

Quick  shootings  through  my  limbs,  and  pricking  pains, 
Qualms  at  my  heart,  convulsions  in  my  nerves, 
Shiverings  of  cold,  and  burnings  of  my  entrails, 
Within  my  little  world  make  medley-war, 
Lose  and  regain,  beat,  and  are  beaten  back, 
As  momentary  victors  quit  their  ground. 
Can  it  be  poison! 

Cleonidas,  in  Cleomenes,  doubts  the  immortality  of 
the  soul 


FALSE  LIGHTS  51 

Because  I  find,  that,  now  my  body  starves, 

My  soul  decays.    I  think  not  as  I  did; 

My  head  goes  round;  and  now  you  swim  before  me; 

Methinks  my  soul  is  like  a  flame  unfed 

With  oil,  that  dances  up  and  down  the  lamp, 

But  must  expire  ere  long. 

And  Cleomenes  himself,  dying,  announces: 
A  rising  vapor  rumbles  in  my  brains. 

Dryden's  excuse  for  every  such  passage  was  that 
"a  man  in  such  an  occasion  is  not  cool  enough, 
either  to  reason  lightly,  or  to  talk  calmly."  Yet  in 
his  own  cooler  days,  when  he  had  Virgil  and  Boccac- 
cio for  guides,  and  less  fortunately  Ovid,  he  still 
guided  his  pen  through  love  and  death  and  regret 
with  clumsy  fingers.  "With  the  simple  and  elem- 
ental passions,  as  they  spring  separate  in  the  mind," 
said  Dr.  Johnson  once  and  for  all,  "he  seems  not 
much  acquainted." 

Dryden's  theory  was  that  if  one  only  entered  in 
with  enthusiasm  and  industrious  abandon  one 
could  succeed  as  well  as  any  in  striking  off  brave, 
fine  talk  in  verse.  While  occupied  with  writing 
heroic  plays  he  was  supported  by  the  creed  that  a 
heroic  poet  "is  not  tied  to  a  bare  representation  of 
what  is  true."  Rather  he  is  expected  to  be  reckless. 

Poets,  like  lovers,  should  be  bold,  and  dare, 

runs  the  piologue  to  Tyrannic  Love;  and  in  the 
preface  to  the  same  play  scorn  is  expressed  for  him 
who  "creeps  after  plain,  dull,  common  sense."  "A 
solid  man  is,  in  plain  English,  a  solid,  solemn  fool," 


52  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

he  was  to  observe  to  the  Earl  of  Mulgrave  six 
years  later.  This  rough-and-ready  ardor  soon 
found  rare  support  in  Longinus,  whose  treatise 
On  the  Sublime  was  translated  by  Boileau  in  France 
in  1674  and  almost  immediately  taken  up  by  Dry- 
den.  Horace  had  insisted  that  the  poet  should  be 
more  than  correct,  and  the  French  critics  generally 
had  allowed  for  elevation  in  style.  Thomas  Rymer, 
in  his  translation  of  Rapin's  Reflections  on  Aris- 
totle's Treatise  of  Poesie,  was  writing  this  sentence  in 
the  same  year  that  Boileau's  Longinus  appeared: 
"Of  late  some  have  fallen  into  another  extremity, 
by  a  too  scrupulous  care  of  purity  of  language: 
they  have  begun  to  take  from  Poesie  all  its  nerves, 
and  all  its  majesty,  by  a  too  timorous  reservedness, 
and  false  modesty."  The  true  poet,  says  Rymer, 
will|have  "flame"  as  well  as  "phlegm."  It  was 
chiefly  from  Longinus  himself,  however,  "who  was 
undoubtedly,  after  Aristotle,  the  greatest  critic 
among  the  Greeks,"  said  Dryden,  that  Dryden  de- 
rived the  substance  of  his  Apology  for  Heroic  Poetry 
and  Poetic  License  in  1677.  He  quoted  Longinus  on 
the  meanness  of  a  poet  who  will  shun  profuseness 
and  write  parsimoniously  in  order  to  secure  safety 
from  ridicule.  And  in  the  light  of  the  famous 
Greek  treatise  he  formulated  a  definition  of  poetic 
license.  But  it  cannot  be  granted  that  he  caught  all 
or  any  of  the  subtlety  of  his  master  in  sublimity. 
Certainly  he  received  no  inspiration  that  served 
later  on  to  chasten  or  ripen  his  manner  of  dealing 
with  the  passions.  He  was  attracted  by  his  teach- 
er's theory  of  images.  "Imaging  is,  in  itself,"  he 


FALSE  LIGHTS  53 

wrote,  "the  very  height  and  life  of  Poetry.  It  is,  as 
Longinus  describes  it,  a  discourse,  which,  by  a  kind 
of  enthusiasm,  or  extraordinary  emotion  of  the 
soul,  makes  it  seem  to  us  that  we  behold  those  things 
which  the  poet  paints,  so  as  to  be  pleased  with  them, 
and  to  admire  them."  He  was  referring  here  to  the 
distinction  made  by  Longinus  between  poetical  and 
oratorical  images.  The  first,  says  Longinus,  is 
achieved  "when  he  who  is  speaking  .  .  .  imagines 
himself  to  see  what  he  is  talking  about,  and  produces 
a  similar  illusion  in  his  hearers."  The  second  is 
merely  "designed  to  give  perspicuity,  and  its  chief 
beauties  are  its  energy  and  reality."  The  metaphor 
which  Dryden  brings  forward  from  his  own  works 
to  prove  that  he  has  approximated  the  poetical 
image  of  Longinus  in  unfortunately  a  typically  bad 
one: 

Seraph  and  cherub,  careless  of  their  charge, 
And  wanton,  in  full  ease  now  live  at  large; 
Unguarded  leave  the  passes  of  the  sky, 
And  all  dissolved  in  hallelujahs  lie. 

Here  if  anywhere  is  final  proof  that  Dryden  lacked 
discrimination  in  executing  and  judging  figures  of 
speech.  He  feigns  well  enough  the  "enthusiasm,  or 
extraordinary  emotion  of  the  soul,"  but  he  does  not 
achieve  the  reality  which  is  after  all  the  end  of  any 
writing.  He  misses  the  chief  point  in  Longinus, 
which  is  that  sublimity  is  not  a  trick  but  is  a  state 
of  mind,  is  not  mere  fine  writing  but  is  the  expres- 
sion of  an  important  personality.  The  distinction 
made  by  Longinus  between  true  sublimity  and 


54          THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

"amplification"  reflects  directly  upon  Dryden,  and 
scarcely  to  his  credit:  "The  sublime  is  often  con- 
veyed in  a  single  thought,  but  amplification  can 
only  subsist  with  a  certain  prolixity  and  diffusive- 
ness." Dryden  spent  energy  on  both  his  figures 
and  his  heroic  declarations;  but  the  effect  is  one  of 
words  rather  than  things.  The  words  seem  stark 
naked  on  the  page;  they  throw  off  no  enlarging 
rings  of  suggestion  or  illusion;  there  is  no  light  be- 
hind. 

Let  Dryden  pronounce  the  final  verdict.  "To 
speak  justly  of  this  whole  matter,"  he  wrote  in 
the  preface  to  Troilus  and  Cressida,  "  'tis  neither 
height  of  thought  that  is  discommended,  nor  pa- 
thetic vehemence,  nor  any  nobleness  of  expression 
in  its  proper  place;  but  'tis  a  false  measure  of  all 
these,  something  which  is  like  them,  and  is  not 
them;  'tis  the  Bristol  stone,  which  appears  like  a 
diamond;  'tis  an  extravagant  thought,  instead  of  a 
sublime  one;  'tis  roaring  madness,  instead  of  vehe- 
mence; and  a  sound  of  words,  instead  of  sense.  If 
Shakespeare  were  stripped  of  all  the  bombasts  in  his 
passions,  and  dressed  in  the  most  vulgar  words,  we 
should  find  the  beauties  of  his  thoughts  remaining; 
if  his  embroideries  were  burnt  down,  there  would 
still  be  silver  at  the  bottom  of  the  melting  pot:  but 
I  fear  (at  least  let  me  fear  it  for  myself)  that  we, 
who  ape  his  sounding  words,  have  nothing  of  his 
thought,  but  are  all  outside;  there  is  not  so  much  as 
a  dwarf  within  our  giant's  clothes."  This  hand- 
some recantation  was  carried  still  further  in  the  pref- 
ace to  the  Spanish  Friar.  But  no  one  should  be 


FALSE  LIGHTS  55 

deceived.  Dryden  was  an  imcomparably  better 
critic  than  he  was  a  writer  of  tragedies.  He  never 
can  be  said  to  have  "settled  his  system  of  propriety," 
as  Dr.  Johnson  would  say. 

Dryden  drew  an  interesting  distinction  between 
Shakespeare  and  Fletcher  in  the  preface  to  Troilus 
and  Cressida.  "The  excellency  of  that  poet  was,  as 
I  have  said,  in  the  more  manly  passions;  Fletcher's 
in  the  softer:  Shakespeare  writ  better  betwixt  man 
and  man;  Fletcher,  betwixt  man  and  woman;  con- 
sequently, one  described  friendship  better;  the  other 
love;  .  .  .  the  scholar  had  the  softer  soul;  but  the 
master  had  the  kinder."  Here  is  offered  an  approach 
to  Dryden's  own  peculiar  triumph  in  the  drama. 
Failing  to  distinguish  himself  in  his  accounts  of  love, 
he  yet  succeeded  famously  in  showing  friendships 
broken  and  mended.  Taking  for  his  model  the 
quarrel  between  Brutus  and  Cassius  in  Shake- 
speare's Julius  Ccesar,  he  executed  four  admirable 
scenes  in  as  many  tragedies.  One  who  would  see 
him  at  his  best  in  dialogue  should  go  to  the  scenes 
between  Antony  and  Ventidius  in  AH  for  Love, 
Hector  and  Troilus  in  Troilus  and  Cressida,  Sebas- 
tian and  Dorax  in  Don  Sebastian,  and  Cleomenes 
and  Cleanthes  in  Cleomenes.  Here  he  is  straight- 
forward, and  he  writes  with  his  mind  on  the  object. 
Here,  in  the  most  limited  sense  of  the  phrase,  he 
shows  the  "manners  of  men."  Almanzor's  blunt 
direction  to  Almahide,  given  before  she  removes  her 
veil,  is  worth  all  the  pages  of  rant  which  follow  upon 
her  committing  that  indiscretion: 


56          THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Speak  quickly,  woman:  I  have  much  to  do. 

Dryden  was  at  his  best  when  describing  a  contest 
between  two  competent  minds  playing  free  of  sen- 
timent. It  was  in  his  true  role  of  sensible  observer 
that  he  wrote  his  quarrel  scenes;  as  it  was  with  his 
plainest  vision  that  he  watched  those  two  astonish- 
ing beasts,  the  hind  and  the  panther,  in  their  end- 
less game  of  crafty  give  and  take: 

To  this  the  Panther  sharply  had  replied; 
But,  having  gained  a  verdict  on  her  side, 
She  wisely  gave  the  loser  leave  to  chide.  .  .  . 
Yet  thought  it  decent  something  should  be  said; 
For  secret  guilt  by  silence  is  betrayed. 
So  neither  granted  all,  nor  much  denied, 
But  answered  with  a  yawning  kind  of  pride. 

It  is  a  commonplace  of  literary  history  that  the 
seventeenth  century  in  Europe  saw  an  almost  comi- 
cal divergence  between  poetic  theory  and  poetic 
practice,  the  heroic  poem  in  France  being  the  in- 
stance usually  given  of  a  type  that  failed  to  fulfil  its 
promise.  In  England,  as  has  been  seen,  the  diver- 
gence was  very  wide  between  Dryden's  theory  and 
Dryden's  achievements  in  so  far  as  they  implicated 
fancy  operating  over  the  face  of  nature  and  imagin- 
ation operating  among  the  human  passions  under 
dramatic  strain;  one  reason  beyond  all  doubt  being 
that  the  separation  in  current  doctrine  of  wit  from 
judgment,  imagination  from  reason,  rendered  it 
difficult  or  impossible  to  discriminate  between  true 
and  false  expression  and  sanctioned  a  certain  reck- 
lessness which  was  mistaken  for  poetic  rage.  There 


FALSE  LIGHTS  57 

is  another  group  of  major  defects  in  the  poetry  of 
Dryden  and  the  Augustans  generally  wherein  form 
rather  than  substance  is  involved,  and  wherefrom 
has  resulted  that  artificiality  of  tone  which  is  the 
proverbial  objection  urged  by  modern  critics.  Here 
again  it  is  possible  to  find  the  poets  controlled  by 
theories,  and  here  again  promise  is  hopelessly  in 
advance  of  fulfilment  owing  to  the  superficial  char- 
acter of  the  theories  and  the  inadequacy  with  which 
they  are  applied.  The  theories  are  that  poetry  is 
like  oratory,  that  poetry  is  like  painting,  and  that 
poetry  is  like  music.1  The  aim  is  to  achieve  the 
ends  of  those  three  parallel  arts  as  well  as  the 
ends  of  poetry,  and  thus  enrich  poetic  expression. 
The  problem  is  purely  one  of  expression,  or  as 
was  said  in  the  seventeenth  century,  of  elocution. 
Art  is  for  the  imitation  of  life.  Each  separate  art 
has '  means  whereby  it  can  accomplish  direct  imi- 
tation. If  poetry,  in  addition  to  its  own  direct 
means,  can  appropriate  the  means  of  other  arts  and 
apply  them  obliquely  to  its  material,  why  should  not 
the  eventual  product  be  so  much  the  fuller  of  beauty 
and  meaning?  Actually  the  product  as  we  now 
regard  it  is  less  beautiful  rather  than  more  beauti- 
ful in  consequence  of  this  confusion  among  the  arts. 
Instead  of  deepening  its  own  medium  by  contact 
with  oratory,  painting,  and  music,  poetry  became 
shallow;  instead  of  growing  more  eloquent,  more 
picturesque,  and  more  harmonious,  it  only  grew 
more  rhetorical,  more  vague,  and  more  monoto- 

1  "In  it  are  assembled  all  the  Powers  of  Eloquence,  of  Musick,  and 
of  Picture."    Sir  William  Temple.    Of  Poetry.  1690. 


58  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

nous.  That  is  to  say,  Augustan  poetry  at  its  worst 
grew  rhetorical,  vague,  and  monotonous;  at  its  best 
it  was  something  far  different.  As  its  worst  has  of- 
ten been  seized  and  unduly  enlarged  upon  by  con- 
trary critics,  and  as  only  the  worst  of  Dryden  is 
being  considered  in  the  present  chapter,  it  seems 
necessary  to  bestow  considerable  attention  at  this 
point  upon  these  weaknesses  which  Dryden  shared 
with  all  his  contemporaries  and  with  most  of  his 
immediate  followers. 

Tacitus  complained  in  his  Dialogus  that  Roman 
oratory  was  being  invaded  by  the  dance;  orations 
were  being  composed  and  delivered  in  dance  meas- 
ures; "orators  speak  voluptuously,"  he  wrote  with 
indignation,  "and  actors  dance  eloquently."  Taci- 
tus was  not  the  first  or  the  last  to  make  objection 
to  the  mingling  in  spirit  and  technique  of  two  dis- 
tinct arts.  Laokoons  were  thought,  even  if  they 
were  not  written,  long  before  Lessing.  But  the 
confusion  of  poetry  with  eloquence  that  began  to  be 
current  in  the  Italian  Renaissance  and  persisted 
throughout  the  criticism  of  all  Europe  for  at  least 
two  centuries  aroused  no  Tacitus  and  was  suffered 
to  run  its  own  long  course  unchallenged.  The 
original  invasion  of  poetry  by  oratory  was  no  less 
gradual  and  peaceable  than  the  final  withdrawal, 
if  indeed  the  withdrawal  can  be  said  as  yet  to  have 
reached  a  final  stage,  or  can  be  expected  or  desired 
ever  to  be  complete.  The  early  Renaissance  crit- 
ics in  Italy  studied  poetry  and  rhetoric  together  at 
a  time  when  neither  was  flourishing  in  anything  like 
perfect  health.  Both  were  being  made  to  serve  the 


FALSE  LIGHTS  59 

purposes  of  flattery  in  small  despotic  courts  where  a 
premium  was  placed  on  fulness  and  roundness  and 
ordered  pomp  of  elocution.  The  Italian  critics 
originated  parallels  and  confusions  which  were  per- 
petuated by  the  French  Pleiade  and  the  English 
theorists  of  Elizabeth's  time.  These  had  mainly  to 
do  with  rules  for  ornamentation  and  devices  for 
securing  striking  effects.  The  classical  critics  had 
confined  the  application  of  their  rules  and  devices 
to  prose  oratory,  all  of  them  agreeing  that  poetry 
had  a  style  of  its  own  which  could  not  be  taught. 
Plato  had  insisted  that  poets  were  inexplicably  in- 
spired, but  he  had  encouraged  men  who  would  be 
orators  to  go  and  study  the  rules.  Aristotle  had 
written  separate  treatises  on  rhetoric  and  poetry, 
and  had  treated  of  artifices  in  connection  with  the 
first  which  he  would  have  denied  could  be  applied 
to  the  second.  Cicero,  Quintilian,  and  Tacitus  had 
discussed  oratory,  not  poetry,  although  Cicero  had 
raised  his  art  both  in  theory  and  in  practice  to  an 
exalted  position.  In  all  this  body  of  doctrine  there 
had  been  gradually  developed  and  clearly  explained 
numerous  elaborate  methods,  not  excluding  asso- 
nance and  rhyme,  by  which  prose  could  be  height- 
ened in  effect,  made  more  symmetrical,  and  given 
a  greater  appearance  of  finality.  Now  when  the 
Italians  established  their  identification  between  the 
poet  and  the  orator  they  were  able  to  offer  to 
the  poet  handsome  if  questionable  assistance.  Po- 
etry in  Europe  did  not  become  rhetorical  over 
night.  In  England,  for  example,  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury saw  eloquence  occupying  the  second  place; 


60          THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Sidney,  Webb,  and  Daniel  denied  it  access  to  the 
highest  levels.  Yet  all  Elizabethan  criticism  is 
curiously  concerned  with  the  whole  matter  of  classi- 
cal figures  and  decorations  so  far  as  they  are  appli- 
cable to  the  style  of  poetry;  and  George  Puttenham 
finds  one  great  difference  between  prose  and  poetry 
to  be  that  poetry  is  the  more  "eloquent  and  rhetor- 
ical." "The  poets,"  says  Puttenham,  "were  .  .  . 
from  the  beginning  the  best  persuaders,  and  their 
eloquence  the  first  rhetoric  of  the  world."  Ben 
Jonson  was  thoroughly  familiar  with  the  works  of 
the  classical  and  post-classical  rhetoricians,  and 
helped  to  establish  a  tradition  of  their  sacred  effi- 
cacy which  outlived  him  a  hundred  years.  It  was 
not  until  Dryden's  time,  when  the  inspiration  of  the 
Elizabethans  had  in  a  way  given  out,  and  the  full 
body  of  modern  classical  doctrine  was  being  re- 
ceived in  its  most  systematic  form  from  France, 
that  eloquence  came  to  feel  completely  at  home  in 
poetry.  Then  it  was  that  sophistication,  easy  ex- 
pertness,  and  obvious  perfection  of  finish  became  of 
paramount  importance  in  the  manner  of  verse.  A 
consciously  "poetic"  style  was  created.  Poets 
called  themselves  "virtuosos."  The  secrets  of  in- 
dividuality became  obscure,  while  the  conventions 
became  easier  each  year  to  follow.  It  became  less 
and  less  desirable  to  state  things  naively;  the  cir- 
cumlocution was  cherished  for  its  elegance  and  the 
antithesis  for  its  effect  of  completeness  and  finality 
even  when  nothing  final  was  being  said.  It  came  to 
be  expected  that  everything,  whether  important  or 
not,  should  be  said  importantly.  There  was  some- 


FALSE  LIGHTS  61 

thing  not  quite  genuine  about  the  poetry  which  was 
the  ultimate  product  of  these  tendencies.  Poetry 
at  its  best  leaves  the  impression  that  there  was 
something  in  the  poet's  head  which  must  have  been 
said,  whatever  the  words  at  hand.  The  poetry 
which  first  of  all  was  eloquence  gave  no  such  im- 
pression. "Modern  poetry,"  complained  Coleridge 
in  1805,  "is  characterized  by  the  poets'  anxiety 
to  be  always  striking.  .  .  .  Every  line,  nay,  every 
word,  stops,  looks  full  in  your  face,  and  asks  and 
begs  for  praise!  .  .  .  There  are  no  distances,  no  per- 
spectives, but  all  is  in  the  foreground;  and  this  is 
nothing  but  vanity.  .  .  .  The  desire  of  carrying 
things  to  a  greater  height  of  pleasure  and  admiration 
than  .  .  .  they  are  susceptible  of,  is  one  great  cause 
of  the  corruption  of  poetry." 

Dryden  was  peculiarly  fitted  to  lead  the  rhetori- 
cal grand  march  in  English  poetry.  Possessing  all 
of  Ovid's  fondness  for  exhortation  and  pleading,  he 
possessed  in  addition  unexampled  powers  of  classi- 
fying and  dividing  his  thoughts,  hitting  upon  happy 
generalities,  thumping  out  bold,  new  epithets,  and 
accumulating  great  stores  of  rhetorical  energy  as  he 
proceeded  to  build  his  resounding  rhyme.  He  car- 
ried eloquence  as  high  as  it  can  go  in  poetry,  which 
is  not  the  highest,  since  eloquence  is  committed  to 
dealing  with  effects  rather  than  forces,  with  novel- 
ties and  ardors  rather  than  with  convictions.  Not 
always  sympathetic  in  theory  with  what  he  once 
condemned  as  "Ciceronian,  copious,  florid,  and 
figurative,"  he  yet  was  inclined  by  nature  and  by 
precept  towards  those  very  qualities.  He  was  in- 


62          THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

clined  to  favor  a  diction  that  was  even  and  digni- 
fied at  the  expense  perhaps  of  piquancy.  "Our 
language  is  noble,  full,  and  significant;"  says  Nean- 
der  towards  the  end  of  the  Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy, 
"and  I  know  not  why  he  who  is  master  of  it  may 
not  clothe  ordinary  things  in  it  as  decently  as  the 
Latin,  if  he  use  the  same  diligence  in  his  choice  of 
words.  Delectus  verborum  origo  est  eloquently.  .  .  . 
One  would  think,  unlock  the  door,  was  a  thing  as 
vulgar  as  could  be  spoken;  and  yet  Seneca  could  make 
it  sound  high  and  lofty  in  his  Latin: 

Reserate  clusos  regii  pastes  laris. 
Set  wide  the  palace  gates." 

Dryden  was  also  inclined  to  fall  into  an  exalted  anti- 
thetical tone  of  formal  address  which  frequently 
suited  his  needs  admirably  but  which  in  many  cases 
has  rendered  him  unattractive  in  the  eyes  of  later 
generations.  That  tone  was  indispensable  in  the 
heroic  plays,  which  were  supposed  by  no  one  to  be 
real.  It  was  of  enormous  advantage  in  Absalom  and 
Achitophel,  where  it  erected  great  public  personages 
to  their  proper  height  and  gave  to  satire  a  strange 
epic  importance;  as  may  best  be  seen  in  Achitophel's 
address  to  Absalom  beginning: 

Auspicious  prince!  at  whose  nativity 
Some  royal  planet  ruled  the  southern  sky, 
Thy  longing  country's  darling  and  desire, 
Their  cloudy  pillar,  and  their  guardian  fire, 
Their  second  Moses,  whose  extended  wand 
Divides  the  seas  and  shows  the  promised  land, 
Whose  dawning  day  in  every  distant  age 
Has  exefcised  the  sacred  prophet's  rage, 


FALSE  LIGHTS  63 

The  people's  prayer,  the  glad  diviner's  theme, 
The  young  men's  vision,  and  the  old  men's  dream, 
Thee,  Saviour,  thee  the  nation's  vows  confess, 
And,  never  satisfied  with  seeing,  bless. 

It  is  not  in  the  heroic  plays  or  in  the  poems  on  pub- 
lic affairs  that  Dryden's  rhetorical  vein  has  failed  to 
meet  with  approval;  it  is  rather  in  those  narrative 
poems  where  nothing  short  of  exquisite  variety  and 
delicacy  are  demanded  by  the  theme.  Here  Dryden, 
instead  of  proving  himself  sensitive  to  the  demands 
made  by  the  successive  turns  of  his  story  and  the 
altered  dispositions  of  his  characters,  continues  to 
speak  in  the  cadence  of  the  pulpit  or  the  bar.  It  is 
this  rigidity  of  manner  which  has  estranged  fastid- 
ious readers  from  the  Virgil  and  the  Fables.  The 
plasticity  of  Virgil  and  Chaucer  is  not  Dryden's. 
Arcite's  dying  speech  to  Emily  is  one  of  Chaucer's 
directest  and  most  intimate  passages: 

Naught  may  the  woful  spirit  in  myn  herte 

Declare  o  point  of  alle  my  sorwes  smerte 

To  yow,  my  lady,  that  I  love  most; 

But  I  bequethe  the  service  of  my  gost 

To  yow  aboven  every  creature, 

Sin  that  my  lyf  may  no  lenger  dure. 

Alias,  the  wo!  alias,  the  peynes  stronge, 

That  I  for  yow  have  suffred,  and  so  longe! 

Alias,  the  deeth!    Alias,  myn  Emelye! 

Alias,  departing  of  our  companye! 

Alias,  myn  hertes  quene!  alias,  my  wyf! 

Myn  hertes  lady,  endere  of  my  lyf! 

What  is  this  world?  What  asketh  men  to  have? 

Now  with  his  love,  now  in  his  colde  grave 


64  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Allone,  withouten  any  companye. 
Far-wel,  my  swete  fo!  myn  Emelye! 
And  softe  tak  me  in  your  armes  tweye, 
For  love  of  God,  and  herkneth  what  I  seye. 

Dryden's  Arcite  speaks  as  follows: 

No  language  can  express  the  smallest  part 
Of  what  I  feel,  and  suffer  in  my  heart, 
For  you,  whom  best  I  love  and  value  most; 
But  to  your  service  I  bequeath  my  ghost; 
Which  from  this  mortal  body  when  untied, 
Unseen,  unheard,  shall  hover  at  your  side; 
Nor  fright  you  waking,  nor  your  sleep  offend, 
But  wait  officious,  and  your  steps  attend. 
How  I  have  loved,  excuse  my  faltering  tongue, 
My  spirit's  feeble,  and  my  pains  are  strong: 
This  I  may  say,  I  only  grieve  to  die, 
Because  I  lose  my  charming  Emily: 
To  die,  when  Heaven  had  put  you  in  my  power, 
Fate  could  not  choose  a  more  malicious  hour! 
What  greater  curse  could  envious  Fortune  give, 
Than  just  to  die,  when  I  began  to  live! 
Vain  men,  how  vanishing  a  bliss  we  crave, 
Now  warm  in  love,  now  withering  in  the  grave! 
Never,  O  never  more  to  see  the  sun! 
Still  dark,  in  a  damp  vault,  and  still  alone! 
This  fate  is  common;  but  I  lose  my  breath 
Near  bliss,  and  yet  not  blest  before  my  death. 
Farewell;  but  take  me  dying  in  your  arms, 
'Tis  all  I  can  enjoy  of  all  your  charms; 
This  hand  I  cannot  but  in  death  resign; 
Ah,  could  I  live!  but  while  I  live  'tis  mine. 
I  feel  my  end  approach,  and  thus  embraced, 
Am  pleased  to  die;  but  hear  me  speak  my  last. 


FALSE  LIGHTS  65 

Dryden  has  no  equal  in  prayers,  objurgations,  po- 
litic addresses,  and  speeches  of  defiance;  he  wears 
the  robes  that  he  has  borrowed  from  the  orator  with 
a  splended  assurance;  his  accents,  although  they  too 
are  borrowed,  ring  true.  But  in  poetic  narrative 
his  limits  are  firmly  fixed.  When  the  shades  of  the 
Forum  cannot  be  beckoned  to  help  him  rise,  he 
does  not  rise.  He  has  always  the  appearance  of 
being  strong,  but  as  Lowell  has  pointed  out,  there  is 
stiffness,  and  there  is  coldness,  in  his  strength. 
Taking  him  altogether,  stiffness  must  be  accounted 
one  of  his  shortcomings. 

Under  Charles  I,  secular  painting  and  music  had 
come  to  England  to  stay.  Van  Dyck  and  Henry 
Lawes,  to  name  no  others,  had  won  the  enduring 
favor  of  courtiers  and  poets;  and  the  technique  of 
each  of  their  arts  had  rapidly  become  familiar  to 
persons  of  culture  or  acquaintance.  Interest  in 
those  arts  from  the  technical  side  continued  to  in- 
crease after  the  Restoration  and  through  the  age  of 
Dryden.  It  became  a  commonplace  of  aesthetics 
that  poetry,  painting,  and  music  are  allied.  Con- 
greve  said  "Poetry  includes  Painting  and  Music." 
English  and  French  writers  throughout  the  eight- 
eenth century  carried  forward  the  double  parallel, 
so  that  when  Friedrich  Schlegel  wrote  in  1798  "Die 
Poesie  ist  Musik  fur  das  innere  Ohr,  und  Malerei  fiir 
das  innere  Auge,"  although  he  implied  something 
that  had  not  been  implied  a  hundred  years  before, 
he  yet  was  dealing  with  what  might  have  been  called 
an  axiom.  This  axiom  was  to  bear  new  and  strange 
fruit  in  nineteenth-century  literature.  Upon  Au- 


66  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

gustan  verse  its  influence  had  been  purely  formal;  it 
had  established  a  diction  and  a  scheme  of  numbers. 
The  single  parallel  between  poetry  and  painting 
was  already  venerable  in  Dryden's  day.  It  had 
first  been  drawn  in  Aristotle's  Poetics;  Horace  and 
Plutarch  had  given  it  momentum;  and  it  had  been 
sanctioned  by  virtually  every  European  critic  dur- 
ing the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  In 
England  the  Elizabethan  theorists  had  touched  upon 
it,  and  it  had  been  ratified  in  turn  by  Ben  Jonson, 
Cowley,  Davenant,  and  Hobbes.  It  was  cherished 
during  the  Restoration  and  the  early  eighteenth 
century,  but  it  eventually  lost  its  meaning,  so  that 
when  Lessing  attacked  it  in  1766,  employing  some 
of  the  weapons  which  Du  Bos  had  used  half  a  cen- 
tury earlier,  he  was  attacking  something  which 
could  offer  only  partial  resistance.  The  parallel  had 
not  borne  along  any  constant  body  of  dogma.  Aris- 
totle had  merely  remarked  that  the  poet,  being  an 
imitator,  is  therefore  like  a  painter  or  any  artist; 
and  it  had  occurred  to  him  to  compare  the  charac- 
ters and  plot  of  a  tragedy  to  the  colors  and  outline 
of  a  painting.  Horace  had  suggested  that  poems 
and  pictures  are  alike  with  respect  to  the  circum- 
stances under  which  spectators  should  judge  them; 
some  appear  better  at  a  distance  than  when  closely 
observed,  some  require  more  lighting  than  others, 
some  should  be  seen  many  times  to  be  appreciated 
at  their  full  value.  Plutarch  had  called  painting 
dumb  poetry,  and  poetry  a  speaking  picture. 
Lessing  objected  to  the  whole  theory  on  the  ground 
that  it  had  led  to  a  freezing  of  the  drama;  in  striv- 


FALSE  LIGHTS  67 

ing  to  remove  ugliness  and  suffering  from  the  sur- 
face of  their  art  so  as  to  render  it  capable  of  compari- 
son with  the  still  surfaces  of  other  arts,  dramatists 
had  thrown  away  their  pity  and  their  terror,  and 
nothing  was  left.  A  stoic  hero  is  not  interesting 
since  he  cannot  suffer.  The  bearings  of  the  theory 
on  dramatic  construction  are  of  no  concern  in  the 
present  connection.  The  parallel  is  important  here 
for  its  bearing  on  the  question  of  Dryden's  diction. 

Dryden  was  thoroughly  familiar  with  the  doc- 
trine of  the  parallel  and  with  its  history.  He  first 
quoted  the  Ut  pictura  poesis  of  Horace  in  his  De- 
fence of  an  Essay  oj  Dramatic  Poesy  in  1668.  His 
works  are  loaded  with  references  to  technical  points 
in  painting,  showing  that  he  considered  himself  ac- 
quainted with  the  practical  problems  of  the  art.  He 
draws  the  parallel,  with  applications  of  his  own,  no 
less  than  twenty  times;  and  often  he  extends  it.  In 
the  Life  of  Plutarch  history  is  compared  with  paint- 
ing. In  the  preface  to  Sylvce  the  shading  of  caden- 
ces in  a  Pindaric  ode  is  found  to  be  like  the  shading 
of  colors  in  a  picture.  In  the  Discourse  Concerning 
Satire  a  satirical  "character"  is  compared  to  a  por- 
trait on  canvas.  It  is  in  the  Parallel  of  Poetry  and 
Painting,  however,  which  Dryden  prefixed  to  his 
translation  of  Du  Fresnoy's  De  Arte  Graphica  in 
1695,  tnat  ne  elaborates  the  parallel  to  its  fullest 
extent  and  explains  its  bearings  on  poetic  diction. 
"Expression,"  he  writes,  "and  all  that  belongs  to 
words,  is  that  in  a  poem  which  colouring  is  in  a  pic- 
ture. The  colours  well  chosen  in  their  proper  places, 
together  with  the  lights  and  shadows  which  belong 


68    THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

to  them,  lighten  the  design,  and  make  it  pleasing  to 
the  eye.  The  words,  the  expressions,  the  tropes  and 
figures,  the  versification,  and  all  the  other  elegan- 
cies of  sound,  as  cadences,  turns  of  words  upon  the 
thought,  and  many  other  things,  which  are  all  parts 
of  expression,  perform  exactly  the  same  office  both 
in  dramatic  and  epic  poetry.  ...  In  poetry,  the  ex- 
pression is  that  which  charms  the  reader,  and  beau- 
tifies the  design,  which  is  only  the  outlines  of  the 
fable.  .  .  .  Amongst  the  ancients,  Zeuxis  was  most 
famous  for  his  colouring;  amongst  the  moderns,  Ti- 
tian and  Correggio.  Of  the  two  ancient  epic  poets, 
who  have  so  far  excelled  all  the  moderns,  the  inven- 
tion and  design  were  the  particular  talents  of  Homer 
.  .  .  but  the  dictio  Virgiliana,  the  expression  of 
Virgil,  his  colouring,  was  incomparably  the  better; 
and  in  that  I  have  always  endeavoured  to  copy 
him."  Expression,  elocution,  diction,  were  cardinal 
points  with  Dryden;  they  absorbed  the  greater 
part  of  his  effort  in  virtuoso-works  like  the  Virgil 
and  the  Fables.  To  be  going  hand  in  hand  with 
Virgil  and  Titian,  the  supreme  colorists,  was  a  su- 
preme privilege  in  his  eyes.  Yet  he  labored  with  a 
complacency  that  one  does  not  expect  in  a  conscien- 
tious painter.  And  his  results  are  what  one  does  not 
find  in  a  conscientious  poet.  For  the  parallel  he 
drew  between  diction  in  poetry  and  color  in  paint- 
ing was  superficial.  He  conceived  color  in  paint- 
ing as  a  kind  of  splendid  wash  applied  after  the 
drawing  is  done.  It  has  no  more  organic  function 
than  that  of  decoration.  It  adds  to  the  glamor  rather 
than  to  the  meaning  of  a  picture.  So  elocution  in 


FALSE  LIGHTS  69 

poetry;  it  is,  "in  plain  English,"  says  Dryden,  "the 
bawd  of  her  sister,  the  design  .  .  .  ;  she  clothes, 
she  dresses  her  up,  she  paints  her,  she  makes  her 
appear  more  lovely  than  naturally  she  is;  she  pro- 
cures the  design,  and  makes  lovers  for  her."  That 
is,  diction  in  poetry  is  a  splendid  wash  that  is  spread 
over  the  framework  of  the  plot.  Words  have  no 
more  organic  function  than  the  painter's  pigments; 
the  imagination  is  nothing  but  camel's  hair. 

The  diction  of  the  firgil  and  the  Fables  is  always 
vigorous  and  smooth,  and  at  its  best  it  is  nothing 
short  of  magnificent.  But  it  is  always  evident  that 
the  poet  has  laid  it  on  from  without.  At  its  best  it 
is  gilt  rather  than  gold,  and  at  its  worst  it  is  tinsel. 
The  tinsel  is  what  modern  readers  have  found  diffi- 
cult to  accept  in  Dryden.  Dryden  applied  his  elo- 
cution with  a  hasty  hand,  and  one  that  rarely 
showed  discrimination.  He  has  been  called  the 
Rubens  among  English  poets  because  of  his  lavish- 
ness  and  gusto;  surely  he  can  deserve  the  title  for  no 
other  reason.  He  has  boundless  gusto;  but  he  is  al- 
most incorrigibly  vague.  His  vagueness  is  partly 
the  result  of  a  theory,  partly  the  result  of  defec- 
tive vision.  The  theory  is  the  theory  of  idealized 
or  generalized  Nature.  He  makes  much  of  it  in  the 
Parallel,  where  he  shows  that  the  poet  and  the 
painter  alike  should  form  ideas  of  a  perfect  nature 
in  which  all  eccentricities  are  corrected  and  all 
vulgarities  pared  away.  The  surface  of  a  poem  or  a 
painting  should  be  smooth  and  beautiful  and  de- 
corous; no  word  or  phrase  should  be  inserted  which 
it  might  strain  the  intelligence  of  elegant  readers  or 


70          THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

spectators  to  understand.  Technical  diction  is 
barred  for  the  benefit  of  "those  men  and  ladies  of 
the  first  quality,  who  have  been  better  bred  than  to 
be  too  nicely  knowing  in  the  terms."  Here  is  the 
source  of  that  generalizing  frame  of  mind  which 
created  the  poetry  and  the  painting  of  the  next  cen- 
tury; that  frame  of  mind  which  made  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds  most  of  what  he  was  as  artist  or  as  critic, 
and  which  eventually  moved  Ruskin  and  Blake 
to  awful  wrath.  "To  generalize,"  said  Blake,  "is 
to  be  an  idiot."  Dryden  generalized.  His  feeling 
for  details  was  not  keen,  and  his  interest  in  them 
was  nil.  He  used  a  broad  brush,  and  painted 
swiftly.  He  did  not  mind  repeating  himself.  He 
would  have  been  pleased  had  he  been  called  conven- 
tional. Virgil  had  conventionalized  Homer.  Dry- 
den  conventionalized  Virgil.  In  the  thirteenth  book 
of  the  Odyssey  Homer  describes  the  harbor  in  Ithaca 
where  Odysseus  landed: 

There  is  in  the  land  of  Ithaca  a  certain  haven  of  Phorcys, 
the  ancient  one  of  the  sea,  and  thereby  are  two  headlands 
of  sheer  cliff,  which  slope  to  the  sea  on  the  haven's  side 
and  break  the  mighty  wave  that  ill  winds  roll  about,  but 
within,  the  decked  ships  ride  unmoored  when  once  they 
have  reached  the  place  of  anchorage.  Now  at  the  harbor's 
head  is  a  long-leaved  olive  tree,  and  hard  by  is  a  pleasant 
cave  and  shadowy,  sacred  to  the  nymphs,  that  are  called 
the  Naiads.  And  therein  are  mixing  bowls  and  jars  of 
stone,  and  there  moreover  bees  do  hive.  And  there  are 
great  looms  of  stone,  wherein  the  nymphs  weave  raiment 
of  purple  stain,  a  marvel  to  behold,  and  therein  are  waters 
welling  evermore.1 

1  Translation  of  Butcher  and  Lang.    Oxford,  1879. 


FALSE  LIGHTS  71 

This  is  the  work  of  a  poet  who  would  always  rather 
insert  a  detail  than  leave  it  out.  Virgil's  descrip- 
tion of  the  Libyan  harbor  where  ^Eneas  landed  (I, 
I59ff.)  is  the  work  of  a  poet  who  cares  somewhat 
less  for  the  concrete  than  he  does  for  the  beautiful: 

There,  in  a  deep  bay,  is  a  roadstead,  which  an  island 
forms  by  its  jutting  sides.  On  those  sides  every  wave 
from  the  deep  breaks,  then  parts  into  the  winding  hollows: 
on  this  hand  and  that  are  vast  rocks,  and  twin  cliffs  frown- 
ing to  heaven;  and  beneath  their  peaks,  far  and  wide,  the 
peaceful  seas  are  silent.  From  the  height  hangs  a  back- 
ground of  waving  forests,  and  a  grove  of  dim  and  tangled 
shadows.  Under  the  fronting  crags  is  a  rock-hung  cave — 
haunted  by  nymphs — and,  within  it,  sweet  water  and  seats 
from  the  living  rock.  l 

Dryden's  account  is  the  work  of  a  man  who  alto- 
gether lacks  fondness  for  particulars: 

Within  a  long  recess  there  lies  a  bay; 
An  island  shades  it  from  the  rolling  sea, 
And  forms  a  port  secure  for  ships  to  ride; 
Broke  by  the  jutting  land,  on  either  side, 
In  double  streams  the  briny  waters  glide; 
Betwixt  two  rows  of  rocks  a  sylvan  scene 
Appears  above,  and  groves  forever  green: 
A  grot  is  formed  beneath,  with  mossy  seats, 
To  rest  the  Nereids,  and  exclude  the  heats. 
Down  through  the  crannies  of  the  living  walls 
The  crystal  streams  descend  in  murmuring  falls. 

In    these   "briny   waters,"    "sylvan    scenes,"    and 

1  Translation  of  John  Jackson.    Oxford.    1908. 


72  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

"crystal  streams"  are  the  beginnings  of  the  stereo- 
typed Nature  which  graced  the  verse  of  England 
for  at  least  two  generations.  No  one  can  be  held 
more  strictly  accountable  for  its  vogue  than  Dry- 
den,  whose  Virgil  was  read  by  every  poet  and 
served  as  a  storehouse,  like  Pope's  Homer,  of  culti- 
vated phrases.  Dryden  supplied  himself  with  a 
kind  of  natural  furniture  with  which  he  could  stock 
any  house  of  verse  that  seemed  to  him  bare.  He 
laid  in  a  fund  of  phrases  with  which  he  could  expand 
any  passage  that  seemed  to  him  curt.  Thus  in  the 
fifth  jEneid,  when  Virgil  writes 

ferit  aethera  clamor 
Nauticus,  adductis  spumant  freta  versa  lacertis, 

Dryden  goes  beyond  him  and  whips  the  sea  into  a 
more  suitable  froth: 

With  shouts  the  sailors  rend  the  starry  skies; 
Lashed  with  their  oars,  the  smoky  billows  rise; 
Sparkles  the  briny  main,  and  the  vexed  ocean  fries. 

One  word  in  Chaucer's  Knight's  Tale,  "huntyng," 
becomes  four  lines  in  Dryden's  Palamon  and  Ar- 
cite: 

A  sylvan  scene  with  various  greens  was  drawn, 
Shades  on  the  sides,  and  in  the  midst  a  lawn; 
The  silver  Cynthia,  with  her  nymphs  around, 
Pursued  the  flying  deer,  the  woods  with  horns  resound. 

Three  words  in  The  Flower  and  the  Leaf,  "the  briddes 
songe,"  become  sixteen  in  Dryden: 

The  painted  birds,  companions  of  the  Spring, 
Hopping  from  spray  to  spray,  were  heard  to  sing. 


FALSE  LIGHTS  73 

Nor  did  young  poets  in  the  time  of  Queen  Anne 
need  to  go  further  than  Diyden  for  models  of  pe- 
riphrasis. The  circumlocution,  that  pale  ghost  of 
the  Roman  epithet,  that  false  pigment  bound  to 
fade  even  before  its  poet-painter  could  apply  it, 
was  everywhere  in  the  later  Dryden.  In  the  JEneis, 
an  arrow  is  a  feathered  death;  in  the  Georgics, 
honey  is  liquid  gold,  tenacious  wax,  ambrosial  dew, 
gathered  glue;  and  always  the  fish  are  finny. 

"Music  and  Poetry  have  ever  been  acknowl- 
edged Sisters,"  said  Henry  Purcell,  the  greatest 
English  musician  of  Dryden's  or  any  other  time. 
He  had  the  Greeks  for  his  authority,  as  well  as  every 
Englishman  who  had  ever  written  either  about 
music  or  about  poetry.  The  analogy  of  the  two  arts 
may  be  said  to  have  seemed  self-evident  to  the 
Elizabethans,  Gascoigne,  Sidney,  Puttenham,  Dan- 
iel, Campion,  and  to  writers  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury. Davenant  confessed  that  he  had  composed 
the  cantos  of  his  Gondibert  with  "so  much  heat  .  .  . 
as  to  presume  they  might  (like  the  works  of  Homer 
ere  they  were  joined  together  and  made  a  volume  by 
the  Athenian  king)  be  sung  at  village  feasts,  though 
not  to  monarchs  after  victory,  nor  to  armies  before 
battle.  For  so  (as  an  inspiration  of  glory  into  the 
one,  and  of  valour  into  the  other)  did  Homer's 
spirit,  long  after  his  body's  rest,  wander  in  musick 
about  Greece."  Sir  William  Temple  derived  music 
and  poetry  from  a  single  source,  a  certain  heat  and 
agitation  of  the  brain.  The  parallel  had  and  al- 
ways will  have  multitudinous  phases,  of  which  the 
opera  and  the  song  and  the  ballad  suggest  the  most 


74    THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

obvious.  The  connection  which  Dryden  and  others 
made  between  the  two  arts  purported  to  be  a  more 
subtle  one  than  that  which  is  involved  in  the  ac- 
companiment of  words  by  music.  It  involved  the 
arrangement  of  words  in  such  a  succession  that  they 
themselves  should  produce  the  effects  of  music. 
This  is  an  important  theory,  which  in  different 
guises  and  in  the  hands  of  different  men  has  been 
productive  of  genuine  poetry;  for  no  one  will  deny 
that  the  most  moving  poetry  has  been  in  some  way 
musical.  But  it  is  not  a  simple  theory,  and  it  can- 
not be  applied  complacently  or  mechanically.  In 
so  far  as  Dryden  and  his  followers  applied  it  com- 
placently and  mechanically  they  failed  to  produce 
poetry  that  moves.  As  in  the  case  of  the  analogy 
from  painting  they  failed  to  perceive  that  it  is  only 
the  color  of  a  distinguished  mind  that  can  lend  dis- 
tinctive shades  of  beauty  to  a  poem,  so  in  the  case 
of  the  analogy  from  music  they  were  not  always 
aware  that  it  is  only  the  tone  of  a  genuinely  com- 
posed and  vibrant  imagination  which  can  give  impor- 
tant harmonies  to  verse.  They  relied  upon  a  kind 
of  musical  attachment,  both  to  furnish  them  with 
a  constant  pitch  and  to  ring  occasional  changes 
suited  to  the  sense. 

"I  do  not  hesitate  to  say,"  wrote  Leigh  Hunt  in 
the  preface  to  his  Story  of  Rimini  in  1816,  "that 
Pope  and  the  French  school  of  versification  have 
known  the  least  on  the  subject  of  any  poets  perhaps 
that  ever  wrote.  They  have  mistaken  mere  smooth- 
ness for  harmony."  This  is  perhaps  the  most  ab- 
solute condemnation  which  the  music  of  Augustan 


FALSE  LIGHTS  75 

verse  has  received.  But  it  is  by  no  means  the  ear- 
liest. Hunt  was  capping  a  commonplace  of  criticism 
with  his  climax.  Milton,  in  his  preface  to  Para- 
dise Lost,  had  categorically  denied  the  possibility 
of  true  music  to  heroic  verse,  with  its  "jingling 
sound  of  like  endings."  Augustan  poets  and  crit- 
ics themselves  had  inveighed  against  "mere  har- 
mony." The  Earl  of  Mulgrave,  in  his  Essay  Upon 
Poetry  of  1682,  had  observed  that 

Number,  and  Rime,  and  that  harmonious  sound 
Which  never  does  the  Ear  with  harshness  wound, 
Are  necessary,  yet  but  vulgar  Arts. 

The  preface  to  that  remarkable  anthology,  the 
Poems  on  Affairs  of  State  (1697),  had  contained  a 
robust  protest  against  mere  regularity:  "There  are 
a  sort  of  men,  who  having  little  other  merit  than  a 
happy  chime,  would  fain  fix  the  Excellence  of  Po- 
etry in  the  smoothness  of  the  Versification,  allow- 
ing but  little  to  the  more  Essential  Qualities  of  a 
Poet,  great  Images,  good  sense,  etc.  Nay  they 
have  so  blind  a  passion  for  what  they  excel  in, 
that  they  will  exclude  all  variety  of  numbers  from 
English  Poetry,  when  they  allow  none  but  Iambics, 
which  must  by  an  identity  of  Sound  bring  a  very 
unpleasant  satiety  upon  the  Reader."  Pope,  in 
his  Essay  on  Criticism,  had  disposed  very  neatly  of 

these  tuneful  fools.  .  .  . 
Who  haunt  Parnassus  but  to  please  their  ear. 

And  finally,  Cowper  in  Table  Talk  had  found  Pope 
wanting  because  he 


76  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Made  poetry  a  mere  mechanic  art, 

And  every  warbler  has  his  tune  by  heart. 

So  that  from  the  beginning  there  had  been  no  lack 
of  consciousness  that  heroic  verse  tended  towards 
monotony.  Yet  in  general  the  claim  of  the  couplet 
writers  that  their  essential  contribution  to  English 
poetry  was  in  the  way  of  harmony  went  without 
serious  challenge  for  a  good  hundred  years  after 
Waller  and  Denham  first  "came  out  into  the  world," 
as  the  saying  was,  "forty  thousand  strong."  It  was 
precisely  the  music  of  the  couplet,  easy  and  contin- 
uous rather  than  intricate  and  intermittent,  that 
won  the  couplet  its  prestige  at  the  start. 

The  relish  of  the  Muse  consists  in  rhyme; 
One  verse  must  meet  another  like  a  chime. 
Our  Saxon  shortness  hath  peculiar  grace 
In  choice  of  words  fit  for  the  ending  place: 
Which  leave  impression  in  the  mind  as  well 
As  closing  sounds  of  some  delightful  bell. 

So  wrote  Sir  John  Beaumont  early  in  Dryden's  cen- 
tury, in  his  Concerning  the  True  Form  of  English 
Poetry.  Not  only  delightful  rhymes  but  flawless 
"numbers"  as  well  became  the  aim  of  successive 
generations  of  versifiers.  At  the  close  of  the  six- 
teenth century  in  France,  Malherbe,  in  his  commen- 
tary on  Desportes,  had  laid  down  rules  for  a  kind  of 
negative  harmony,  a  mere  smoothness,  in  French 
verse.  The  only  distinction  between  prose  and 
verse,  said  Malherbe,  was  to  be  nombre.  "Num- 
bers" became  paramount  both  in  England  and  in 
France.  "The  music  of  numbers  .  .  .,"  wrote  Cow- 


FALSE  LIGHTS  77 

ley,  "almost  without  anything  else,  makes  an  excel- 
lent poet."  The  preface  l  to  Joshua  Poole's  English 
Parnassus  (1657),  an  enterprising  forerunner  of  the 
handbooks  on  poetry  which  Bysshe,  Gildon,  and 
others  were  to  issue  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
placed  particular  emphasis  upon  the  "Symphony 
and  Cadence"  of  poesy;  right  accent,  "like  right 
time  in  Music,  produces  harmony";  rhyme  is  the 
"symphony  and  music  of  a  verse."  It  became  easy, 
by  Pope's  time,  to  write  in  flawless  cadence.  Pope 
himself,  despising  as  he  did  the  tuneful  poetasters, 
tuned  his  own  instrument  with  great  pains.  "The 
great  rule  of  verse,"  he  told  Spence,  "is  to  be  musi- 
cal." Within  their  narrow  range,  it  must  be  granted, 
the  Augustan  poets  were  able  to  achieve  a  much 
greater  variety  of  tone  than  it  now  is  the  custom  to 
recognize,  and  it  never  is  necessary  to  remind  a 
knowing  reader  that  the  best  of  these  poets  were 
anything  but  slaves  to  numbers.  But  no  one  will 
deny  that  their  range  was  too  narrow,  and  that 
their  eneigies  were  directed  too  much  into  the 
mechanics  of  their  art. 

Dryden,  who  was  considered  in  his  own  day  to  be 
unrivalled  anywhere  for  diversity,  and  who  must 
always  be  prized  for  his  really  genuine  melody, 
lived  also  under  the  spell  of  numbers,  believing  in 
them  with  his  whole  mind  and  communicating  his 
faith  with  a  proselyting  zeal.  Such  monotony  and 
such  glibness  as  he  has  result  from  the  conviction 
which  he  never  abandoned  that  a  poet's  best  pow- 
ers should  go  into  the  perfecting  of  his  verse  in- 

1  Signed  "  J.  D." 


78          THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

strument.  Aristotle  had  not  denied  to  the  music  of 
the  flute  and  the  lyre  the  capacity  for  imitating 
life,  but  he  had  observed  that  the  medium  through 
which  musical  instruments  may  function  in  their 
imitation  of  life  is  restricted  to  "harmony  and 
rhythm  alone."  Dryden,  believing  always  that 
"versification  and  numbers  are  the  greatest  pleas- 
ures of  poetry,"  tended  to  cherish  heroic  verse  as  a 
musical  instrument,  and  to  work  for  "harmony  and 
rhythm  alone."  He  thought  that  "well-placing  of 
words,  for  the  sweetness  of  pronunciation,  was  not 
known  till  Mr.  Waller  introduced  it."  He  never 
doubted  that  English  could  be  rendered  more  liquid 
than  it  was,  so  that  in  time  it  might  even  com- 
pete with  Virgil's  Latin  and  with  Tasso's  Italian, 
"the  softest,  the  sweetest,  the  most  harmonious" 
of  all  tongues,  a  tongue  which  seemed  to  him  "to 
have  been  invented  for  the  sake  of  Poetry  and 
Music."  His  desire  was  always  for  more  "even, 
sweet,  and  flowing  "  lines.  His  objection  to  English 
consonants  and  monosyllables  was  that  they  ob- 
structed the  flow  of  verse.  His  fondness  for  Latin- 
istic  polysyllables  arose  from  the  capacity  which 
they  seemed  to  have  for  "softening  our  uncouth 
numbers,"  for  suppling  the  heroic  line,  and  impart- 
ing to  it  an  undulating  grace.  Circumlocutions  rec- 
ommended themselves  to  him  and  to  all  Augustans 
as  much  for  their  sound  as  for  their  ingenuity. 
"Periphrasis,"  Longinus  told  them,  "tends  much  to 
sublimity.  For,  as  in  music  the  simple  air  is  ren- 
dered more  pleasing  by  the  addition  of  harmony,  so 
in  language  periphrasis  often  sounds  in  concord 


FALSE  LIGHTS  79 

with  a  literal  expression,  adding  much  to  the  beauty 
of  its  tone — provided  always  that  it  is  not  inflated 
and  harsh,  but  agreeably  blended.  Plato  .  .  .  takes 
.  .  .  words  in  their  naked  simplicity  and  handles 
them  as  a  musician,  investing  them  with  melody, — • 
harmonizing  them,  as  it  were, — by  the  use  of  periph- 
rasis." Dryden  was  well  aware  at  all  times  that 
it  is  possible  to  become  smooth  at  the  expense 
of  more  important  qualities.  "I  pretend  to  no  dic- 
tatorship," he  confessed  in  his  dedication  of  the 
jEneis,  "among  my  fellow  poets,  since,  if  I  should 
instruct  some  of  them  to  make  well-running  verses, 
they  want  genius  to  give  them  strength  as  well  as 
sweetness."  Dryden  can  rarely  be  said  to  have  had 
the  appearance  of  weakness,  either  in  his  Virgil  or 
elsewhere.  Yet  it  was  just  in  his  JEneis  that  he 
surrendered  most  completely  to  the  tyranny  of 
numbers.  His  boundless  admiration  for  Virgil's 
metrical  and  verbal  genius  led  him  to  toy  with 
strange  devices.  Recognizing  clearly  enough  that 
Virgil's  haunting  melody  was  well  beyond  his  reach, 
he  endeavored  to  compensate  the  readers  of  his 
translation  with  obvious  and  rather  sensational 
substitutes.  For  the  effect  of  fluency  and  for  "soft- 
ening "  his  numbers  he  depended  upon  polysylla- 
bles; not  finding  a  sufficient  stock  of  dissyllabic  ad- 
jectives in  the  language,  he  devised  some  of  his  own, 
as  heapy,  spiry,  sluicy,  sweepy,  forky,  fainty, 
spumy,  barmy,  beamy,  roofy,  flaggy,  ropy,  dauby, 
piny,  moony,  chinky,  pory,  and  hugy.  Not  find- 
ing, either,  a  sufficient  stock  of  long  Latin  words 
in  English,  he  brought  many  of  Virgil's  abundant 


80          THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

phrases  straight  over,  rendering  them  for  what 
they  appeared  rather  than  for  what  they  meant. 
It  is  impossible  to  quote  any  one  passage  from  the 
jEneis  which  will  adequately  reveal  the  virtuoso 
temper  in  which  Dryden  composed  it.  But  it  is  no 
exaggeration  to  say  that  it  shows  better  than  any 
other  Augustan  poem  the  effects  of  musical  princi- 
ples applied  mechanically  to  verse. 

Pope,  as  is  well  known,  had  in  mind  two  kinds  of 
tuneful  fools  when  he  was  writing  his  Essay  on  Crit- 
icism. 

'Tis  not  enough  no  harshness  gives  offense, 
The  sound  must  seem  an  echo  to  the  sense. 

The  second  line  of  his  couplet  referred  to  the  Dick 
Minims  who  insisted  that  "imitative  harmony," 
or  "representative  harmony,"  or  "representative 
versification,"  as  it  was  variously  called,  was  an  in- 
dispensable ingredient  in  poetry.  Dionysius  of 
Halicarnassus  was  perhaps  the  parent  of  the  creed. 
Vida  had  echoed  him  in  his  De  Arte  Poetica,  and  the 
dogma  had  settled  gradually  down  through  various 
Italian  and  Spanish  rhetoricians  to  Cowley,  who  in 
a  note  to  his  Davideis  declared  that  "the  disposi- 
tion of  words  and  numbers  should  be  such,  as  that 
out  of  the  order  and  sound  of  them,  the  things 
themselves  may  be  represented."  The  Earl  of 
Roscommon,  in  his  Essay  on  Translated  Verse 
(1684),  wrote: 

The  Delicacy  of  the  nicest  Ear 

Finds  nothing  harsh  or  out  of  Order  there. 


FALSE  LIGHTS  81 

Sublime  or  low,  unbended  or  Intense, 
The  sound  is  still  an  echo  to  the  Sense. 

Pope's  lines,  which  derived  no  doubt  from  Ros- 
common's,  gave  the  doctrine  especial  currency,  and 
to  echo  sense  with  sound  became  a  pleasant  duty  of 
versifiers.  Pope  himself  told  Spence  that  he  "fol- 
lowed the  significance  of  the  numbers,  and  the 
adapting  them  to  the  sense,  much  more  even  than 
Dryden."  Later  in  the  eighteenth  century  there 
grew  up  a  rather  fine  distinction  between  what  Dr. 
Johnson  called  the  imitation  of  sound  and  the  imi- 
tation of  motion  in  verse.  Daniel  Webb,  in  his 
Observations  on  the  Correspondence  between  Poetry 
and  Music  (1769),  claimed  that  the  use  of  words 
to  represent  sounds  was  an  inferior  artifice,  not  com- 
parable to  the  important  art  of  communicating  emo- 
tion through  cadences.  James  Beattie,  in  his  Es- 
say on  Poetry  and  Music  as  they  Affect  the  Mind 
(1776),  followed  Webb;  and  Dr.  Johnson,  in  his 
lives  of  Cowley  and  Pope,  enunciated  the  distinc- 
tion most  forcibly  of  all.  At  its  highest,  imitative 
harmony  cannot  be  said  to  have  attained  the  dig- 
nity of  an  art.  It  was  always  a  cheap  and  easy  ar- 
tifice not  to  be  associated  with  that  mysterious  power, 
possessed  in  the  greatest  abundance  by  Virgil, 
Milton,  and  Wordsworth,  which  works  its  mighty 
will  among  the  emotions  purely  through  combina- 
tions of  sounds. 

"The  chief  secret,"  confided  Dryden  in  the  pref- 
ace to  Albion  and  Albanius,  "is  the  choice  of  words; 
and,  by  this  choice,  I  do  not  here  mean  elegancy  of 
expression,  but  propriety  of  sound,  to  be  varied  ac- 


82  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

cording  to  the  nature  of  the  subject.  Perhaps  a 
time  may  come  when  I  may  treat  of  this  more  largely 
out  of  some  observations  which  I  have  made  from 
Homer  and  Virgil,  who,  amongst  all  the  poets, 
only  understood  the  art  of  numbers."  Dryden 
never  treated  of  the  matter  on  the  scale  he  prom- 
ised here,  nor  had  he  done  so  is  it  likely  that  his 
treatise  would  have  been  profound.  He  was  not 
only  intrigued,  he  was  baffled  by  the  solemn  har- 
monies of  Virgil,  whose  verse,  he  observed  in  the 
preface  to  Syha,  "is  everywhere  sounding  the 
very  thing  in  your  ears,  whose  sense  it  bears."  His 
own  Firgil  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  an  exten- 
sive p roving-ground  for  imitative  harmony.  It  is  a 
huge  temple  of  sound,  not  beautiful  on  the  whole, 
but  sturdy  and  imposing.  Dryden  attempts  in  it 
to  represent  both  noises  and  movements,  if  Dr. 
Johnson's  distinction  may  be  employed  once  more. 
The  first  he  accomplished  without  any  subtlety  at 
all.  He  is  particularly  fond  of  storms  that  churn  the 
seas  and  shake  the  shores.  Our  ears  grow  accus- 
tomed to  windy  caverns  echoing  thunder.  Time 
and  time  again 

The  impetuous  ocean  roars, 
And  rocks  rebellow  from  the  sounding  shores. 

There  are  no  gradations  of  violence  in  Dryden's 
weather,  and  there  is  rarely  any  more  than  an  ob- 
vious and  general  fitness  in  Dryden's  language.  He 
is  much  more  cunning  when  he  is  representing  move- 
ments of  animals  or  persons.  The  fifth  book  of  his 
JEneis  is  particularly  noteworthy  in  this  connec- 


FALSE  LIGHTS  83 

tion.  The  serpent  which  issues  from  Anchises' 
tomb  while  ^Eneas  is  praying  before  it  moves  with 
a  writhing  splendor: 

Scarce  had  he  finished,  when  with  speckled  pride 
A  serpent  from  the  tomb  began  to  glide; 
His  hugy  bulk  on  seven  high  volumes  rolled; 
Blue  was  his  breadth  of  back,  but  streaked  with 

scaly  gold; 

Thus  riding  on  his  curls,  he  seemed  to  pass 
A  rolling  fire  along,  and  singe  the  grass. 
More  various  colours  through  his  body  run 
Than  Iris  when  her  bow  imbibes  the  sun. 
Betwixt  the  rising  altars,  and  around, 
The  sacred  monster  shot  along  the  ground; 
With  harmless  play  amidst  the  bowls  he  passed, 
And  with  his  lolling  tongue  essayed  the  taste. 
Thus  fed  with  holy  food,  the  wondrous  guest 
Within  the  hollow  tomb  retired  to  rest. 

The  funeral  games  are  presented  in  plunging, 
roughly  felicitous  cadences.  The  boxers  Dares  and 
Entellus  seem  to  strike  real  blows  and  fall  their  ac- 
tual heavy  lengths  in  Dryden's  verse;  and  the 
young  horsemen  perform  their  evolutions  without 
a  metrical  flaw: 

The  second  signal  sounds,  the  troop  divides 
In  three  distinguished  parts,  with  three  distin- 
guished guides. 

Again  they  close,  and  once  again  disjoin; 
In  troop  to  troop  opposed,  and  line  to  line. 
They  meet;  they  wheel;  they  throw  their  darts  afar 
With  harmless  rage,  and  well-dissembled  war: 
Then  in  a  round  the  mingled  bodies  run; 
Flying  they  follow,  and  pursuing  shun; 


84  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Broken,  they  break;  and,  rallying,  they  renew 

In  other  forms  the  military  shew. 

At  last,  in  order,  undiscerned  they  join 

And  march  together  in  a  friendly  line. 

And,  as  the  Cretan  labyrinth  of  old, 

With  wandering  ways  and  many  a  winding  fold, 

Involved  the  weary  feet,  without  redress, 

In  a  round  error,  which  denied  recess; 

So  fought  the  Trojan  boys  in  warlike  play, 

Turned  and  returned,  and  still  a  different  way. 

Dryden's  Pirgil  served  Pope  and  many  other  suc- 
cessors as  a  sample-book  wherein  both  representa- 
tive cadences  and  representative  words  could  be 
found.  Pope's  famous  lines  on  Camilla  in  the  Essay 
on  Criticism  come  from  Dryden's  portrait  of  Camilla 
at  the  end  of  the  seventh  JEneid  more  directly 
than  from  Virgil  himself.  Dryden's  virago 

Outstripped  the  winds  in  speed  upon  the  plain, 
Flew  o'er  the  fields,  nor  hurt  the  bearded  grain; 
She  swept  the  seas,  and  as  she  skimmed  along, 
Her  flying  feet  unbathed  on  billows  hung. 

Pope's  Homer  owes  much  to  the  Virgil  in  this  as 
well  as  in  other  departments.  Gray's  Progress  oj 
Poesy  borrows  Dryden's  most  sounding  diction,  as 
in  the  lines 

Now  rolling  down  the  steep  amain, 

Headlong,  impetuous,  see  it  pour; 

The  rocks  and  nodding  groves  rebellow  to  the  roar. 

From  Cowley  to  Dick  Minim  Dryden  was  the 
great  example  of  the  imitative  versifier,  as  he  was 
also  the  great  example  of  most  of  what  the  Augus- 


FALSE  LIGHTS  85 

tans  believed  to  comprise  a  poet.  It  seems  never  to 
have  been  suspected  that  Dry  den  was  speaking 
with  his  most  communicative  cadences  in  the  sat- 
ires and  the  epistles.  But  nothing  is  more  natural 
than  that  his  best  music  should  be  heard  in  the 
poems  which  he  most  meant.  It  was  when  he  was 
most  oblivious  of  the  problem  of  adapting  sound  to 
sense,  when  he  was  fullest  of  the  scorn  or  the  admi- 
ration which  he  knew  better  than  any  other  poet  to 
express,  that  he  fell  into  his  properest  rhythms. 
These  two  utterly  contemptuous  lines  from  Absalom 
and  Achitophel, 

A  numerous  host  of  dreaming  saints  succeed, 
Of  the  true  old  enthusiastic  breed, 

are  perfectly  tuned;  the  vowels  and  the  consonants, 
whether  or  not  they  were  thoughtfully  chosen,  are 
steeped  in  disdain.  This  gracious  triplet  from  the 
poem  To  the  Memory  of  Mr.  Oldham, 

Thy  generous  fruits,  though  gathered  ere  their  prime, 

Still  shewed  a  quickness;  and  maturing  time 

But  mellows  what  we  write  to  the  dull  sweets  of  rhyme, 

is  otherwise  attuned,  but  its  attunement  too  is  per- 
fect. The  acceleration  in  the  second  line  speaks 
eagerness  to  praise  whatever  can  be  praised;  the 
long,  ripe  cadence  of  the  close  breathes  consola- 
tion. Such  passages  are  worth,  as  poetry,  a  thou- 
sand Camillas  and  all  the  rocks  that  ever  were 
heard  rebellowing  to  the  roar.  It  is  in  them  that  the 
true  fire  of  Dryden's  genius  will  be  found  to  burn. 


Ill 

THE  TRUE  FIRE 

The  only  qualities  which  Wordsworth  could  find 
in  Dryden  deserving  to  be  called  poetical  were  "a 
certain  ardour  and  impetuosity  of  mind"  and  "an 
excellent  ear."  Whether  or  not  Wordsworth  stopped 
short  of  justice  in  his  enumeration,  he  hit  upon  two 
virtues  which  are  cardinal  in  Dryden,  and  confined 
himself  with  proper  prudence  to  what  in  Dryden  is 
more  important  than  any  other  thing,  his  manner. 
His  manner,  embracing  both  an  enthusiastic  ap- 
proach to  any  work  and  a  technical  dexterity  in  the 
performance  of  it,  was  constant.  The  channels 
through  which  his  enthusiasm  drove  him  were  not 
always  fitted  for  his  passage,  as  we  have  been  see- 
ing; nor  was  his  ease  of  motion  always  an  advan- 
tage, inasmuch  as  his  metrical  felicity  served  at 
times  only  to  accentuate  his  original  error  in  choice 
of  province.  But  when  his  material  was  congenial, 
and  when  he  himself  was  thoroughly  at  home  in  his 
style,  he  was  unexceptionable. 

Dryden  was  most  at  home  when  he  was  making 
statements.  His  poetry  was  the  poetry  of  declara- 
tion. At  his  best  he  wrote  without  figures,  with- 
out transforming  passion.  When  Shakespeare's 
imagination  was  kindled  his  page  thronged  with 
images.  When  Donne  was  most  genuinely  pos- 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  87 

sessed  by  his  theme  he  departed  in  a  passionate 
search  for  conceits.  When  Dryden  jjecame  firedjie 
only  wrote  more  plainly.  The  metal  of  his  genius 
was  silver,  and  the  longer  it  was  heated  the  more 
silver  it  grew.  Nausicaa  fell  in  love  with  Odysseus 
because  the  goddess  Athene  had  shed  a  strange 
grace  about  his  head  and  shoulders  and  made  him 
seem  more  presentable  than  he  was.  No  one  can  be 
impressed  by  Dryden  who  sees  him  in  disguise.  One 
must  see  him  as  he  is:  a  poet  of  opinion,  a  poet  of 
company,  a  poet  of  civilization.  It  is  not  to  be  in- 
ferred that  he  was  without  passion;  no  man  ever  had 
more.  But  his  was  not  the  passion  that  behaves 
like  ecstasy;  he  never  got  outside  himself.  His  pas- 
sion was  the  passion  of  assurance.  His  great  love 
was  the  love  of  speaking  fully  and  with  finality;  his 
favorite  subjects  being  personages  and  books. 

Personages  he  treated  from  a  variety  of  motives, 
but  always  with  honest  delight.  He  celebrated  pub- 
lic heroes  real  or  supposed,  sketched  the  characters 
of  men  in  high  places  and  in  low,  addressed  elabo- 
rate compliments  to  benefactors  or  friends,  de- 
scribed minds  and  actions  both  in  fact  and  in  fable 
with  an  endless  relish.  Books  he  treated  from  a 
single  motive,  admiration  for  them  and  their  mak- 
ers. Dryden  was  above  all  things  a  literary  man. 
His  mind  could  best  be  energized  by  contact  with 
other  minds;  he  himself  could  become  preoccupied 
most  easily  with  other  poets.  He  sat  down  with 
indubitable  pleasure  to  write  his  addresses  to  How- 
ard, to  Roscommon,  to  Lee,  to  Motteux,  his  la- 
ments for  Oldham  and  Anne  Killigrew,  his  pro- 


88  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

logues  and  epilogues  on  Shakespeare,  Jonson,  and 
the  present  state  of  poetry.  He  was  partial  to  lit- 
erary history  and  literary  parallels  as  subjects  for 
poems,  and  no  one  in  English  has  done  better  crit- 
icism in  meter.  In  verse  as  in  prose  he  earned  Dr. 
Johnson's  judgment  that  "the  criticism  of  Dry- 
den  is  the  criticism  of  a  poet."  Personalities,  ac- 
tions, ideas,  and  art  were  Dryden's  best  material. 
But  let  it  be  said  again,  the  story  of  Dryden's 
conquest  of  English  poetry  for  the  most  part  is  the 
story  not  of  his  material  but  of  his  manner.  It  is  the 
story  of  a  poet  who  inherited  a  medium,  perfected 
it  by  long  manipulation,  stamped  it  with  his  genius, 
and  handed  it  on.  That  medium  was  heroic  couplet 
verse.  The  utility  of  the  heroic  couplet  had  been 
established  for  all  time  in  England  by  Chaucer. 
Spenser,  Marlowe,  and  Shakespeare  had  made 
various  uses  of  it  at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
as  had  also  the  group  of  satirists  which  included 
Hall,  Lodge,  Marston,  and  Donne.  It  had  grown 
more  and  more  in  favor  during  the  early  years  of 
Dryden's  century  and  had  begun  to  adapt  itself 
to  the  type  of  mind  which  Dryden  represents  long 
before  he  became  of  age  poetically.  This  adaptation 

/involved  a  number  of  characteristics,  of  which  the 
end-stop,  the  best  known,  was  only  one;  the  others 
were  a  conformation  of  the  sentence-structure  to 
the  metrical  pattern,  a  tendency  towards  poly- 
syllables within  the  line,  a  tendency  towards  em- 
phatic words  at  the  ends  of  lines,  and  a  frequent 
use  of  balance  with  pronounced  caesura.  The  end- 
stop,  and  the  modification  of  sentence-structure  to 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  89 

suit  the  length  of  measure,  made  for  pointedness  if 
not  for  brevity,  and  provided  in  the  couplet  a  ratio- 
cinative  unit  which  served  admirably  as  the  basis 
for  declarative  or  argumentative  poems.  The  polysyl- 
lables made  for  speed  and  flexibility,  and  encouraged 
a  Latinized,  abstract  vocabulary.  The  insistence 
upon  important  words  for  the  closing  of  lines  meant 
that  the  sense  was  not  likely  to  trail  off  or  be  left 
hanging;  and  the  use  of  balance  promoted  that  air 
of  spruce  finality  with  which  every  reader  of  Augustan 
verse  has  long  been  familiar. 

Just  when  and  in  whom  the  couplet  first  reached 
a  stage  something  like  this  is  a  matter  that  has  not 
been  settled.  In  France  a  similar  development  can 
be  traced  back  pretty  clearly  to  Malherbe,  whose 
formula  for  perfect  rhetorical  poetry  called,  among 
other  things,  for  a  caesura  which  should  cut  every 
verse  into  two  equal  parts.  "As  for  the  pauses," 
said  Dryden  in  the  dedication  of  the  jEneis,  "Mal- 
herbe  first  brought  them  into  French  within  this 
last  century;  and  we  see  how  they  adorn  their  Al- 
exandrines." No  formula  like  Malherbe's  was  con- 
trived in  England,  but  the  first  half  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  there  saw  couplet  verse  invaded  and 
conquered  by  the  principles  just  specified.  Credit 
for  the  innovation  has  been  given  to  a  number  of 
different  poets,  none  of  whom  can  be  said  to  de- 
serve it  wholly.  Edward  Fairfax,  the  translator  of 
Tasso's  Godfrey  of  Bulloigne  (1600),  is  the  earliest 
whom  Dryden  himself  named  among  the  reformers 
of  English  versification;  in  the  preface  to  the  Fables 
Waller  is  declared  the  "poetical  son"  of  Fairfax. 


90  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

The  stanzas  of  the  Tasso  end  in  couplets  which  of- 
ten have  the  accent  of  the  Augustans,  but  which 
more  often  have  it  not,  tending  less  towards  a  mo- 
notony of  balance  than  towards  a  monotony  of  se- 
ries or  "triplets"  of  adjectives  and  nouns.  Michael 
Drayton  at  various  times  during  his  long  career 
wrote  couplets  which  come  very  near  to  having  Dry- 
den's  ring;  his  England's  Heroical  Epistles  (1597) 
afford  the  best  examples.  Drayton  was  a  good 
Elizabethan,  which  suggests  that  there  were  many 
Elizabethans  who  could  write  Augustan  couplets. 
Spenser  did  so  in  his  Mother  Rubber  d^s  Tale;  the 
closing  couplets  of  Shakespeare's  sonnets  are  cu- 
riously like  Dryden  and  Pope,  as  here: 

For  we,  which  now  behold  these  present  days, 
Have  eyes  to  wonder,  but  lack  tongues  to  praise. 

The  Elizabethan  satirists,  particularly  Joseph  Hall, 
whose  Firgidemiarum  appeared  in  1597-8,  spoke 
occasionally  in  clear  tones,  though  in  general  their 
expression  was  uneven,  and  such  felicity  as  they 
permitted  themselves  to  achieve  was  not  conta- 
gious. Ben  Jonson's  influence  on  seventeenth  cen- 
tury poetry  was  immense,  and  he  was  in  large  part 
responsible  for  the  new  form  of  heroic  verse;  but 
his  chief  influence  was  rather  upon  diction  than  upon 
meter.  Sir  John  Beaumont,  who  died  in  1627, 
wrote  his  Bosworth  Field  and  other  poems  in  coup- 
lets which  not  only  for  their  own  time  but  for  any 
time  are  models  of  sweetness  and  clarity.  The 
Metamorphoses  of  George  Sandys  (1621-6)  was  for  a 
hundred  years  after  its  publication  a  landmark  to 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  91 

all  who  would  trace  poetical  genealogies.  Dryden 
called  Sandys  "the  best  versifier  of  the  former  age" 
in  the  preface  to  the  Fables,  and  Pope  paired  him 
with  Dryden's  Fairfax  as  a  "model  to  Waller"  in 
versification.  The  couplets  of  his  Ovid  were  what 
Drayton  called  them,  "smooth-sliding,"  but  they 
were  neither  as  uniform  nor  as  brisk  as  the  new 
poetry  was  to  require.  Milton  wrote  four  of  his 
Cambridge  poems  in  couplets  which  are  not  sig- 
nificant here.  The  speech  of  the  Genius  in  Arcades 
begins  like  one  of  Dryden's  prologues: 

Stay,  gentle  swains,  for  though  in  this  disguise, 
I  see  bright  honour  sparkle  through  your  eyes; 

but  it  does  not  continue  in  that  vein. 

It  was  Waller  who  the  Augustans  themselves, 
from  Dryden  on,  declared  had  been  the  parent  of 
their  line.  Francis  Atterbury,  in  his  preface  to  the 
1690  edition  of  Waller's  poems,  gave  a  detailed 

account  of  what  he  believed  Waller's  innovations ^ 

to  have  been.     "Before  his  time,"  said  Atterbury, 
"men  rhymed  indeed,  and  that  was  all;  as  for  the 
harmony  of  measure,  and  that  dance  of  words  which     \ 
good  ears  are  so  much  pleased  with,  they  knew  noth-      \ 
ing  of  it.    Their  poetry  then  was  made  up  almost  en-      \ 
tirely  of  monosyllables;  which,  when  they  come  to-       j 
gether  in  any  cluster,  are  certainly  the  most  harsh, 
untuneable  things  in  the  world.  .  .  .  Besides,  their 
verses  ran  all  into  one  another,  and  hung  together, 
throughout  a  whole  copy,  like  the  hooked  atoms 
that  compose  a  body  in  Descartes.     There  was  no 
distinction  of  parts,  no  regular  stops,  nothing  for  the 


92  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

ear  to  rest  upon.  .  .  .  Mr.  Waller  removed  all  these 
faults,  brought  in  more  polysyllables,  and  smoother 
measures,  bound  up  his  thoughts  better,  and  in  a 
cadence  more  agreeable  to  the  nature  of  the  verse 
he  wrote  in-;  so  that  wherever  the  natural  stops  of 
that  were,  he  contrived  the  little  breakings  of  his 
sense  so  as  to  fall  in  with  them;  and,  for  that  reason, 
since  the  stress  of  our  verse  lies  commonly  upon  the 
last  syllable,  you  will  hardly  ever  find  him  using 
a  word  of  no  force  there."  Atterbury  was  very 
greatly  exaggerating  the  chaotic  state  of  English  verse 
before  Waller,  and  he  attributed  innovations  to 
Waller  that  really  should  be  credited  to  Marlowe, 
Sandys,  and  others;  yet  he  analyzed  with  particular 
delicacy  the  salient  points  in  which  Dryden's  ver- 
sification differs,  for  instance,  from  Donne's. 

Cowley's  Davideis  was  composed  in  heroic  coup- 
lets which  could  teach  Dryden  nothing  after  Waller 
and  Denham.  Cowley  handled  this  measure  less 
felicitously  than  he  handled  any  other;  the  Davideis 
does  not  chime.  Cleveland's  political  poems,  which 
Dryden  must  have  read  before  the  Restoration, 
were  not  smooth  or  sweet,  but  they  had  another 
quality  which  was  important  for  Dryden,  the  qual- 
ity of  momentous  directness.  Such  pauseless  lines 
as  these, 

Encountering  with  a  brother  of  the  cloth, 
Who  used  to  string  their  teeth  upon  their  belt, 
Religion  for  their  seamstress  or  their  cook, 

gave  Dryden  his  metrical  cue  on  more  than  one  oc- 
casion. 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  93 

Dryden  wrote  altogether,  over  a  period  of  exactly 
fifty  years,  some  thirty  thousand  heroic  couplets. 
The  stream  of  English  verse,  flowing  through  him 
thus  for  half  a  century,  both  sustained  him  and 
was  sustained  by  him.  His  achievement  was  to 
make  of  it  a  strong  yet  light  vehicle  for  miscellaneous 
loads,  a  medium  for  the  poetry  of  statement.  He 
learned  to  say  anything  in  it  that  he  liked,  high  or 
low,  narrow  or  broad.  Earlier  in  the  century  John 
Selden  had  written  in  his  Table  Talk:  "Tis  ridicu- 
lous to  speak,  or  write,  or  preach  in  verse.  As  'tis 
good  to  learn  to  dance,  a  man  may  learn  to  leg, 
learn  to  go  handsomely;  but  'tis  ridiculous  for  him 
to  dance  when  he  should  go."  Dryden  showed  how 
one  might  speak,  and  write,  and  preach,  and  how 
one  might  "go"  in  verse.  Verse  became  for  him  a 
natural  form  of  utterance.  "Thoughts,  such  as 
they  are,  come  crowding  in  so  fast  upon  me,"  he 
wrote  in  the  preface  to  the  Fables,  "that  my  only 
difficulty  is  to  choose  or  to  reject,  to  run  them  into 
verse,  or  to  give  them  the  other  harmony  of  prose; 
I  have  so  long  studied  and  practiced  both,  that  they 
are  grown  into  a  habit,  and  become  familiar  to  me." 

Dryden's  style  was  a  constant  delight  to  his  con- 
temporaries because  it  was  unfailingly  fresh;  new 
poems  by  Mr.  Dryden  meant  in  all  likelihood  new 
cadences,  new  airs.  He  was  perpetually  fresh  be- 
cause he  perpetually  studied  his  versification.  He 
perhaps  was  not  a  laborious  student  of  metrics;  the 
Prosodia  for  which  he  said  in  the  dedication  of  the 
JEneis  that  he  had  long  ago  collected  the  materials, 
but  which  he  never  published,  might  have  been  any- 


94          THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

thing  other  than  exhaustive.  Yet  there  can  be  no 
question  that  he  experimented  freely  and  was  al- 
ways sensitive  to  novel  demands  that  novel  sub- 
jects might  make  upon  his  medium.  He  generally 
knew  beforehand  what  effects  he  should  gain;  and 
he  had  a  happy  faculty  for  hitting  at  once  upon 
rhythms  which  would  secure  those  effects.  His  was 
not,  like  Doeg's,  "a  blundering  kind  of  melody." 
"There  is  nobody  but  knows,"  declared  John  Old- 
mixon  in  1728,  "that  it  was  impossible  for  Dryden 
to  make  an  ill  verse,  or  to  want  an  apt  and  musical 
word,  if  he  took  the  least  care  about  it."  He  was 
always  conscious  that  rhyme  was  a  handicap,  but 
he  accepted  it  without  any  prolonged  protest;  and 
within  the  bounds  imposed  by  it  he  obtained  a  sur- 
prising diversity  of  accent.  He  defended  rhyming 
plays  against  Sir  Robert  Howard  in  the  dedication 
of  the  Rival  Ladies,  in  the  Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy, 
and  in  the  Defence  of  the  Essay,  taking  occasion  by 
the  way  to  declare  against  the  inversions  and  the 
strained  diction  into  which  the  exigencies  of  rhyme 
tend  to  force  even  good  poets.  But  in  the  prologue 
to  Aureng-Zebe  he  repudiated  his  "long-loved  Mis- 
tress"; in  both  the  epistle  to  Roscommon  and  the 
epistle  to  Sir  Godfrey  Kneller  he  damned  her  as  a 
barbaric  fraud  foisted  upon  Europe  by  the  Goths 
and  Vandals;  and  in  the  dedication  of  the  JEneis  he 
admitted  that  "Rhyme  is  certainly  a  constraint  even 
to  the  best  poets." 

Dryden  did  not  always  make  his  principles  of 
versification  clear,  nor  did  he  ever  follow  any  of 
them  scrupulously.  A  good  case  is  that  of  the  mon- 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  95 

osyllables.  The  Elizabethans  had  not  been  moved 
to  inveigh  against  monosyllables.  "The  more  .  .  . 
that  you  use,"  said  Gascoigne,  "the  truer  English- 
man you  shall  seem."  But  the  new  versifiers  found 
them  clogging,  and  spoke  against  them  with  great  fre- 
quency. Dryden  was  especially  resentful  of  "our 
old  Teuton  monosyllables."  Yet  he  employed  the 
"low  words,"  as  Pope  called  them,  time  and  again 
with  excellent  effect.  He  began  his  JEneis  with  ten 
of  them: 

Arms  and  the  man  I  sing,  who,  forced  by  fate; 

and  some  of  his  most  telling  passages  have  twenty 
in  succession.  He  told  the  young  poet  Walsh  that 
he  was  often  guilty  of  them  "through  haste."  It 
should  be  understood  that  his  quarrel  was  only  with 
monosyllablic  lines  that  are  heavy  with  consonants, 
like  this  from  Creech's  Lucretius: 

Thee,  who  hast  light  from  midst  thick  darkness 
brought, 

or  this  from  Ben  Jonson's  poem  to  Camden, 

Men  scarce  can  make  that  doubt,  but  thou  canst 
teach. 

He  gladly  allowed  such  open,  liquid  lines  as  this 
from  the  same  poem  of  Jonson's : 

All  that  I  am  in  arts,  all  that  I  know. 

Of  course,  both  easy  polysyllabic  and  difficult  mono- 
syllabic lines  can  be  effective  in  ways  of  their  own; 
no  more  compendious  example  of  which  could  be 
cited  than  these  two  from  Hamlet's  last  speech, 


96  THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Absent  thee  from  felicity  awhile, 

And  in  this  harsh  world  draw  thy  breath  in  pain, 

where  both  serve  by  means  exactly  opposite  to  ex- 
press the  pain  of  dying.  Dryden  was  probably  not 
always  aware  of  the  extent  to  which  he  relied  upon 
mechanical  devices.  Alliteration  seems  to  have 
been  instinctive  with  him,  as  indeed  it  is  with  most 
rapid  and  powerful  English  writers.  It  played  an 
integral  part  in  his  versification,  assisting  both  sense 
and  sound.  Scarcely  ten  consecutive  lines  can  be 
found  in  him  wherein  alliteration  is  not  conspicuous. 
It  serves  a  variety  of  purposes.  In  satire  it  is  either 
corrosive  in  its  contemptuousness : 

In  friendship  false,  implacable  in  hate, 
Resolved  to  ruin  or  to  rule  the  state; 

or  simply  derisive  and  pelting: 

And  pricks  up  his  predestinating  ears, 
And  popularly  prosecutes  the  plot. 

In  ratiocination  it  quietly  weaves  phrases  into  a 
firm  texture  of  thought: 

This  general  worship  is  to  praise  and  pray, 
One  part  to  borrow  blessings,  one  to  pay; 
And  when /rail  nature  slides  into  of/ense, 
The  sacrifice  for  crimes  is  penitence. 
Yet,  since  the  effects  of  providence,  we/ind, 
Are  variously  dispensed  to  humankind; 
That  »ice  triumphs,  and  wrtue  suffers  here, 
(A  brand  that  sovereign  justice  cannot  &ear;) 
Our  reason  prompts  us  to  a  future  state, 
The  last  appeal  from  fortune  and  from  fate. 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  97 

In   narrative   it   lends   luxuriance   and   momentum 
where  it  does  not  lend  speed: 

Down  fell  the  beauteous  youth;  the  gaping  wound 
Gushed  out  a  crimson  stream,  and  stained  the  ground. 
His  nodding  neck  reclines  on  his  white  breast, 
Like  a /air /lower,  in/urrowed/ields  oppressed 
By  the  keen  share;  or  poppy  on  the  plain, 
Whose  heavy  head  is  overcharged  with  rain. 
Disdain,  despair,  and  deadly  vengeance  powed, 
Drove  Nisus  headlong  on  the  Aostile  crowd. 

Dryden's  gift  for  adapting  his  rhythmical  em- 
phasis to  his  meaning  amounted  to  genius.  Allit- 
eration, effective  rhyme,  antithesis,  and  the  use  of 
polysyllables  were  only  auxiliaries  to  that.  It  was 
that  which  gave  him  rapidity  without  the  appear- 
ance of  haste  and  flexibility  without  the  loss  of 
strength.  Bound  by  the  laws  of  a  syllabic  system  of 
versification  and  condemned  to  a  narrow  metrical 
range,  he  succeeded  in  manipulating  his  measures 
so  that  he  could  speak  directly  and  easily  yet  with 
dignity.  He  was  more  than  a  believer  in  mere  va- 
riety of  accent,  though  he  stressed  that  too  as  early 
as  the  Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy,  where  Neander  ob- 
served, "Nothing  that  does  Perpetuo  tenor e  fluere, 
run  in  the  same  channel,  can  please  always.  'Tis 
like  the  murmuring  of  a  stream,  which  not  varying 
in  the  fall,  causes  at  first  attention,  at  last  drowsi- 
ness. Variety  of  cadences  is  the  best  rule."  Dry- 
den  was  a  believer  in  significant  variety  of  accent. 
Pope,  in  a  letter  to  his  friend  Henry  Cromwell, 
recognized  three  places  within  the  heroic  line  where 


98     THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

pauses  might  come:  after  the  fourth,  after  the  fifth, 
and  after  the  sixth  syllables.  Dryden  knew  no  lim- 
its of  the  kind.  The  freedom  of  blank  verse  seems  to 
have  been  in  his  thoughts.  His  pauses  come  any- 
where; and  often  they  do  not  come  at  all,  as  in  these 
lines : 

Drawn  to  the  dregs  of  a  democracy, 
Of  the  true  old  enthusiastic  breed, 
To  the  next  headlong  steep  of  anarchy, 
But  baffled  by  an  arbitrary  crowd. 

He  kept  himself  free  to  distribute  his  emphasis 
where  the  sense  demanded  it.  The  result  was  what 
might  be  called  a  speaking  voice  in  poetry.  Some 
one  seems  actually  to  be  reciting  Absalom  and  Achi- 
tophel: 

Others  thought  kings  an  useless  heavy  load, 
Who  cost  too  much,  and  did  too  little  good; 
They  were  for  laying  honest  David  by, 
On  principles  of  pure  good  husbandry. 

And  the  voice  of  a  physical  Prologue  is  plainly 
heard  here: 

Lord,  how  reformed  and  quiet  are  we  grown, 
Since  all  our  braves  and  all  our  wits  are  gone!  .  .  . 
France,  and  the  fleet,  have  swept  the  town  so  clear 
That  we  can  act  in  peace,  and  you  can  hear.  .  .  . 
'Twas  a  sad  sight,  before  they  marched  from  home, 
To  see  our  warriors  in  red  waistcoats  come, 
With  hair  tucked  up,  into  our  tiring-room. 
But  'twas  more  sad  to  hear  their  last  adieu: 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  99 

The  women  sobbed,  and  swore  they  would  be  true; 
And  so  they  were,  as  long  as  e'er  they  could, 
But  powerful  guinea  cannot  be  withstood, 
And  they  were  made  of  playhouse  flesh  and  blood. 

Everywhere  Dryden's  personal  presence  can  be 
felt.  Pope  lurks  behind  his  poetry;  Dryden  stands 
well  forward,  flush  with  his  page  and  speaking  with 
an  honest  voice  if  not  an  honest  heart. 

The  most  speaking  lines  in  the  last  passage  quoted 
are  the  two  which  close  their  respective  triplets. 
Dryden's  triplets  and  Alexandrines  have  been 
sources  of  worry  to  critics  and  sources  of  satisfac- 
tion to  enemies.  Inheriting  the  triplet  from  Chap- 
man and  Waller,  the  Alexandrine  from  Spenser 
and  Hall,  and  the  two  in  combination  from  Cowley, 
he  took  these  devices  to  himself  and  made  them 
into  important  metrical  instruments.  He  did  not 
always  succeed  in  working  them  into  his  medium,  in 
rendering  them  organic  within  his  verse  structure; 
often  they  were  excrescences.  The  Earl  of  Roches- 
ter was  thinking  of  this  when  he  spoke  of  Dryden's 
"loose  slattern  muse,"  and  Tom  Brown,  that  ex- 
cellent fooler,  made  fine  fun  of  the  laureate's  long 
lines.  Swift  was  angered  at  the  currency  which 
Dryden  had  given  to  triplets  and  Alexandrines,  and 
Dr.  Johnson  condemned  such  of  them  as  were  not 
justified  by  the  general  tenor  of  the  passages  in 
which  they  occurred.  Macaulay  disposed  of  them 
as  "sluttish."  Dryden  put  them  to  various  uses. 
Sometimes  his  Alexandrines  and  fourteeners  served 
little  or  no  purpose,  being  most  likely  unconscious 
echoes  of  the  French  heroic  line.  At  other  times 


ioo         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

they  contributed  a  sweep  of  burlesque  grandeur,  as  in 
the  epistle  to  John  Driden  of  Chesterton: 

But  Maurus  sweeps  whole  parishes,  and  peoples 
every  grave. 

Elsewhere,  and  particularly  in  the  translations, 
they  were  calculated  to  yield  an  effect  of  splendor. 
Dryden  counted  on  them,  when  he  was  putting 
Lucretius  into  English,  to  represent  what  he  called 
"the  perpetual  torrent  of  his  verse."  A  passage  in 
the  dedication  of  the  JEneis  described  how  they 
were  used  in  that  work:  "Spenser  has  .  .  .  given  me 
the  boldness  to  make  use  sometimes  of  his  Alexan- 
drine line.  .  .  .  It  adds  a  certain  majesty  to  the  verse, 
when  it  is  used  with  judgment,  and  stops  the  sense 
from  overflowing  into  another  line.  ...  I  take  an- 
other license  in  my  verses:  for  I  frequently  make  use 
of  triplet  rhymes,  and  for  the  same  reason,  because 
they  bound  the  sense.  And  therefore  I  generally 
join  the  two  licenses  together,  and  make  the  last 
verse  of  the  triplet  a  Pindaric;  for,  besides  the  maj- 
esty which  it  gives,  it  confines  the  sense  within  the 
barriers  of  three  lines,  which  would  languish  if  it 
were  lengthened  into  four.  Spenser  is  my  example 
for  both  these  privileges  of  English  verses;  and 
Chapman  has  followed  him  in  his  translation  of 
Homer.  Mr.  Cowley  has  given  into  them  after  both; 
and  all  succeeding  writers  after  him.  I  regard  them 
now  as  the  Magna  Charta  of  heroic  poetry,  and  am 
too  much  an  Englishman  to  lose  what  my  ancestors 
have  gained  for  me.  Let  the  French  and  Italians 
value  themselves  on  their  regularity;  strength  and 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  101 

elevation  are  our  standard."  They  were  not  al- 
ways used  with  judgment  in  the  Virgil,  their  fre- 
quency being  a  root  of  weakness  rather  than  of 
strength.  At  certain  junctures,  in  the  Pirgil  and 
elsewhere,  they  discharged  Dryden's  accumulated 
poetic  energy  in  passages  that  partook  of  the  nature 
of  the  ode.1  In  the  present  connection  there  remains 
to  be  pointed  out  a  function  of  theirs  which  is  differ- 
ent from  the  rest  and  which  has  not  been  empha- 
sized before.  It  is  a  function  that  may  have  been 
discerned  in  the  prologue  from  which  the  last  quo- 
tation was  made;  it  operates  everywhere  in  the  oc- 
casional poems;  it  consists  in  the  supplying  of  a 
colloquial,  first-hand  note.  The  third  line  of  a  trip- 
let in  Dryden  frequently  represents  a  lowering  of 
the  voice  to  the  level  of  parenthesis  or  innuendo,  as 
in  the  Epilogue  Spoken  at  the  Opening  of  the  New 
House,  March  26,  1674: 

A  country  lip  may  have  the  velvet  touch; 
Tho'  she's  no  lady,  you  may  think  her  such; 
A  strong  imagination  may  do  much; 

or  in  the  prologue  to  Troilus  and  Cressida: 

And  that  insipid  stuff  which  here  you  hate, 
Might  somewhere  else  be  called  a  grave  debate; 
Dulness  is  decent  in  the  Church  and  State; 

or  in  the  prologue  to  Love  Triumphant: 

The  fable  has  a  moral,  too,  if  sought; 
But  let  that  go;  for,  upon  second  thought, 
He  fears  but  few  come  hither  to  be  taught. 

1  See  Chapter  VI. 


102         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Triplets  closing  with  Alexandrines  frequently  suc- 
ceed in  imparting  a  compendiousness  to  compli- 
ment, as  in  the  epistle  to  Congreve: 

Firm  Doric  pillars  found  your  solid  base; 
The  fair  Corinthian  crowns  the  higher  space; 
Thus  all  below  is  strength,  and  all  above  is  grace. 

In  him  all  beauties  of  this  age  we  see, 

Etherege  his  courtship,  Southerne's  purity, 

The  satire,  wit,  and  strength  of  Manly  Wycherley. 

This  is  your  portion;  this  your  native  store; 
Heaven,  that  but  once  was  prodigal  before, 
To  Shakespeare  gave  as  much;  she  could  not  give  him 
more. 

Lines  like  these  represent  Dryden's  metrical  license 
at  its  safest  and  best;  he  could  not  always  be  trusted 
to  employ  it  sanely  when  describing  storms  of  Na- 
ture or  of  passion  in  Virgil  and  Lucretius;  when  he 
used  it  to  stamp  a  statement  of  his  own,  as  here,  he 
was  well  within  his  province  and  could  not  go  wrong. 
A  trip  let-and-f  our  teener  which  appears  in  the 
Cymon  and  Iphigenia  leads  the  way  to  another  met- 
rical device  of  which  Dryden  pretended  to  be  fond. 
The  triplet  runs: 

The  fanning  wind  upon  her  bosom  blows, 
To  meet  the  fanning  wind  the  bosom  rose; 
The  fanning  wind  and  purling  streams  continue  her 
repose. 

This  is  one  of  those  "turns"  which  Dryden  in  the 
Discourse  Concerning  Satire  said  that  he  had  been 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  103 

led  by  Sir  George  Mackenzie  twenty  years  before  to 
study  in  Waller,  Denham,  Spenser,  Tasso,  Virgil, 
and  Ovid.  A  "turn"  involved  the  musical  repeti- 
tion of  a  phrase  with  variations  of  meaning.  Dry- 
den  had  a  good  deal  to  say  about  "turns"  from  time 
to  time,  but  in  general  he  thought  them  below  his 
dignity,  and  worthy  of  no  greater  geniuses  than 
those  of  Ovid  and  the  French,  or  of  such  minor 
versifiers  of  the  day  as  pleased  themselves  with  trans- 
lating Virgil's  fourth  Georgic  and  wringing  all  the 
possible  echoes  out  of  the  name  Eurydice.  The 
sleeping  Iphigenia  occurred  to  him  as  a  pretty 
enough  subject  upon  which  to  try  one  of  the  met- 
rical toys.  He  tried  few  others,  though  in  general 
he  was  perhaps  too  fond  of  playing  with  words  for 
their  own  sake,  so  that  he  exposed  himself  to  the 
censure  of  Luke  Milbourne,  to  name  an  enemy,  and 
John  Oldmixon,  to  name  an  admirer,  for  "turning 
the  Epick  style  into  Elegiack."  Virgil's  turn  in  the 
seventh  Eclogue, 

Fraxinus  in  silvis  pulcherrima,  pinus  in  hortis, 
Populus  in  fluviis,  abies  in  montibus  altis; 
Saepius  at  si  me,  Lycida  formose,  revisas, 
Fraxinus  in  silvis  cedat  tibi,  pinus  in  hortis, 

he  rendered  thus: 

The  towering  ash  is  fairest  in  the  woods; 
In  gardens  pines,  and  poplars  by  the  floods; 
But,  if  my  Lycidas  will  ease  my  pains, 
And  after  visit  our  forsaken  plains, 
To  him  the  towering  ash  shall  yield  in  woods, 
In  gardens  pines,  and  poplars  by  the  floods. 


104         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

"He  was  an  improving  writer  to  the  last,"  said 
Congreve.  What  Dryden  improved  in  most  stead- 
ily was  the  texture  of  his  verse.  The  difference  in 
respect  of  texture  between  the  poem  on  the  death 
of  Hastings  and  The  Hind  and  the  Panther,  to  go  no 
further,  is  enormous;  that  the  author  of  one  should 
have  grown  out  of  the  author  of  the  other  seems 
now  a  kind  of  miracle.  The  transformation,  which 
was  gradual,  involved  the  discovery  and  the  ex- 
ploitation of  a  fundamental  rhythm,  and  it  pro- 
gressed with  the  adaptation  of  that  rhythm,  through 
modification  or  enrichment,  to  widely  varying 
themes.  Dryden's  metrical  evolution  began  with 
his  earliest  verses  and  proceeded  through  the  plays, 
through  the  poems  on  public  affairs,  and  through  the 
translations. 

He  scored  no  decisive  technical  triumph  before 
the  period  of  the  heroic  plays.  The  early  poems, 
distinguished  as  they  are  in  spots,  and  approaching 
Dryden's  best  manner  as  they  do  at  times,  cannot 
be  supposed  to  have  encouraged  the  poet  to  believe 
that  he  had  caught  his  stride.  The  first  one,  the 
elegy  on  Hastings  (1649),  was  done,  it  must  be  re- 
membered, before  he  was  eighteen.  Metrically  it 
was  chaos.  Gray  remarked  to  Mason  that  it  seemed 
the  work  of  a  man  who  had  no  ear  and  might  never 
have  any.  Gray  probably  had  in  mind  such  lines  as 
those  addressed  to  Hastings'  "virgin-widow": 

Transcribe  the  original  in  new  copies;  give 
Hastings  o'  th'  better  part;  so  shall  he  live 
In's  nobler  half;  and  the  great  grandsire  be 
Of  an  heroic  divine  progeny. 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  105 

There  is  nothing  of  the  future  Dryden  there.  But 
in  the  outburst  against  old  age  that  precedes  there  is 
a  Juvenalian  enthusiasm  which  warms  the  verse  to  a 
species  of  transparency;  and  certain  other  lines  have 
a  readiness  and  a  bound: 

But  hasty  winter,  with  one  blast,  hath  brought 
The  hopes  of  autumn,  summer,  spring,  to  naught. 
Thus  fades  the  oak  i'  th*  sprig,  i'  th'  blade  the  corn; 
Thus  without  young,  this  Phoenix  dies,  new-born. 

The  Heroic  Stanzas  appeared  ten  years  later,  after 
what  must  have  been  a  period  of  frequent  experi- 
ments in  more  than  one  kind  of  meter.  The  poems 
to  John  Hoddesdon  (1650)  and  to  Honor  Dryden 
(1655)  had  not  told  of  any  advance.  But  in  this 
poem,  as  in  the  Annus  Mirabilis  eight  years  later 
still,  Dryden  wielded  with  positive  assurance  a 
mighty  line  which  was  very  much  his  own.  Spen- 
ser  in  Colin  Clout,  Sir  John  Davies,  Donne,  and  Ben 
Jonson  had  written  heroic  stanzas  before  Davenant; 
and  Davenant,  wishing  to  adapt  his  utterance  "to  a 
plain  and  stately  composing  of  music,"  had  inter- 
woven his  long-falling,  leaden-stepping  lines  to 
form  what  Dryden  and  Soame  called  "the  stiff 
formal  style  of  Gondibert"  But  no  elegaic  quat- 
rains before  1659  had  contained  verses  more  eman- 
cipated or  more  confident  than  these  on  Cromwell: 

His  grandeur  he  derived  from  Heaven  alone; 

For  he  was  great  ere  fortune  made  him  so: 
And  wars,  like  mists  that  rise  against  the  sun, 

Made  him  but  greater  seem,  not  greater  grow. 


io6         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

By  his  command  we  boldly  crossed  the  line, 
And  bravely  fought  where  southern  stars  arise; 

We  traced  the  far-fetched  gold  into  the  mine, 

And  that  which  bribed  our  fathers  made  our  prize. 


His  ashes  in  a  peaceful  urn  shall  rest; 

His  name  a  great  example  stands  to  show, 
How  strangely  high  endeavors  may  be  blessed, 

Where  piety  and  valour  jointly  go. 

Each  quatrain  developed  a  proposition  of  its  own, 
and  generally,  as  in  the  first  two  which  have  been 
quoted,  a  distinction  was  stated.  It  is  interesting  to 
see  Dryden's  earliest  fluency  coming  to  him  in  the 
exercise  of  ratiocination.  The  heroic  stanza  with 
its  leisurely  authority  continued  to  fascinate  him 
even  when  he  resorted  to  other  forms.  His  next 
poem,  Astraa  Redux  (1660),  started  off  with  twenty- 
eight  lines  sharply  divided  into  groups  of  four  and 
developing  seven  distinct  propositions.  The  brief 
series  of  complimentary  poems  which  began  with 
the  Astraa  were  quickened  and  sweetened  by  the 
influence  of  Waller,  although  Dryden  in  them  did 
not  attain  to  his  eventual  flow.  The  heroic  stanza 
motif  was  quickly  silenced,  but  no  other  motif  was  as 
yet  distinguishable.  The  close  of  the  Astraa  had 
what  must  have  seemed  a  new  sort  of  drive;  and 
passages  like  the  following  from  the  poem  To  His 
Sacred  Majesty,  a  Panegyric  on  His  Coronation 
(1661),  must  have  struck  the  ears  even  of  Waller's 
readers  as  novel  because  of  their  swift,  smooth  rap- 
ture: 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  107 

The  grateful  choir  their  harmony  employ, 
Not  to  make  greater,  but  more  solemn  joy; 
Wrapped  soft  and  warm  your  name  is  sent  on  high, 
As  flames  do  on  the  wings  of  incense  fly; 
Music  herself  is  lost,  in  vain  she  brings 
Her  choicest  notes  to  praise  the  best  of  kings; 
Her  melting  strains  in  you  a  tomb  have  found, 
And  lie  like  bees  in  their  own  sweetness  drowned. 
He  that  brought  peace,  and  discord  could  atone, 
His  name  is  music  of  itself  alone. 

In  the  poem  To  My  Lord  Chancellor  (1662)  there 
were  lines  somewhat  similar  on  the  subject  of 
Charles  I,  "our  setting  sun."  Dryden  in  them  is 
seen  to  be  at  least  partially  a  master  of  his  medium; 
his  voice  is  becoming  a  more  important  instrument 
than  his  pen.  The  poem  To  The  Lady  Castlemaine, 
Upon  Her  Incour 'aging  His  First  Play  (c.  1663)  both 
began  and  ended  with  skilfully  modulated  tones 
and  happily  emphatic  stresses;  the  Verses  to  Her 
Highness  the  Duchess  (1665),  prefixed  to  the  first 
edition  of  Annus  Mirabilis,  rode  pleasantly  on  the 
wings  of  Waller: 

While,  from  afar,  we  heard  the  cannon  play, 
Like  distant  thunder  on  a  shiny  day. 

Certain  of  the  stanzas  in  Annus  Mirabilis,  as  has 
been  said,  struggled  not  unsuccessfully  to  surmount 
the  rubbish  that  lay  about  them: 

The  moon  shone  clear  on  the  becalmed  flood, 

Where,  while  her  beams  like  glittering  silver  play, 

Upon  the  deck  our  careful  General  stood, 
And  deeply  mused  on  the  succeeding  day. 


io8         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

That  happy  sun,  said  he,  will  rise  again, 
Who  twice  victorious  did  our  navy  see; 

And  I  alone  must  view  him  rise  in  vain, 
Without  one  ray  of  all  his  star  for  me. 

Yet  like  an  English  general  will  I  die, 

And  all  the  ocean  make  my  spacious  grave; 

Women  and  cowards  on  the  land  may  die, 
The  sea's  a  tomb  that's  proper  for  the  brave. 

Restless  he  passed  the  remnants  of  the  night. 
Till  the  fresh  air  proclaimed  the  morning  nigh; 

And  burning  ships,  the  martyrs  of  the  fight, 
With  paler  fires  beheld  the  eastern  sky. 

"The  composition  and  fate  of  eight-and-twenty 
dramas  include  too  much  of  a  poetical  life  to  be 
omitted,"  remarked  Dr.  Johnson.  The  dramas 
which  Dryden  wrote  in  verse  were  of  the  first  im- 
portance in  his  metrical  development;  for  it  was  in 
them  that  he  became  fully  aware  of  the  energy 
which  is  latent  in  the  heroic  couplet,  and  it  was  in 
them  that  he  cut  the  rhythmical  pattern  which  was 
to  serve  him  during  the  remainder  of  his  career. 
He  recognized  that  a  writer  of  verse  plays  had  first 
of  all  to  write  swiftly;  for  "all  that  is  said  is  sup- 
posed to  be  the  effect  of  sudden  thought;  which  .  .  . 
admits  .  .  .  not  anything  that  shows  remoteness  of 
thought,  or  labor  in  the  writer."  He  learned  to  ad- 
just his  load  while  the  load  was  light.  Some  of  his 
plays  were  largely  dependent  for  their  success  upon 
the  quality  of  their  meter,  or  perhaps  the  quantity. 
Writing  them  with  a  flesh-and-blood  audience,  an 
actually  hearing  audience  in  mind,  he  could  not  be 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  109 

inattentive  to  the  claims  of  the  ear.  His  dramatic 
triumph,  such  as  it  was,  was  a  triumph  chiefly  of 
the  ear.  He  won  his  way  to  fame  through  sheer 
metrical  genius,  this  metrical  genius  first  manifest- 
ing itself  in  the  heroic  plays. 

You  in  the  people's  ears  began  to  chime, 

And  please  the  Town  with  your  successful  Rime, 

grudgingly  admitted  Shadwell  in  the  Medal  of 
John  Bayes.  The  heroic  plays,  generally  speaking, 
were  of  manifold  origin;  they  derived  from  English 
tragicomedy,  from  French  romance,  and  from 
French  tragedy.  Their  verse  too  derived  from 
more  than  a  single  source,  perhaps;  but  Corneille 
stands  forth  as  a  great  progenitor  of  English  heroic 
versifiers  for  the  stage.  Dryden  adduced  "the 
example  of  Corneille  and  some  French  poets"  when 
in  the  essay  Of  Heroic  Plays  he  was  explaining  the 
pieces  which  Davenant  had  produced  under  the  Com- 
monwealth; and  Dryden  himself  knew  a  good  deal 
about  the  French  dramatist,  both  as  critic  and  as 
poet.  He  found  in  Corneille  a  vein  of  oratory 
which  was  effective  as  poetry  no  less  than  as  drama; 
like  Corneille  he  had  a  fondness  for  stage  argument 
and  for  stoic  declamation,  and  from  him  he  learned 
the  value  of  an  obvious,  unbroken  melody.  Dry- 
den was  fascinated  at  an  early  point  by  rhymed 
argumentation.  He  spoke  in  the  Essay  of  Dramatic 
Poesy  of  "the  quick  and  poynant  brevity"  of  rep- 
artee; "and  this,"  he  said,  "joined  with  the  ca- 
dency and  sweetness  of  the  rhyme,  leaves  nothing  in 
the  soul  of  the  hearer  to  desire."  He  employed  the 


i  io    THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

give-and-take  of  rhymed  repartee  chiefly  in  the 
heroic  plays,  but  strains  of  it  also  appeared  amidst 
his  blank  verse  and  his  prose,  at  such  times  as  he 
could  not  resist  the  temptation  to  chime.  Dryden 
was  fascinated  again  by  the  possibilities  of  mere 
rhyme,  possibilities  which  are  naturally  very  great 
in  English.  The  heroic  plays  were  staged  with  an 
elaborate  musical  accompaniment,  and  it  is  certain 
that  the  audiences  accepted  the  verse  as  only  a  por- 
tion of  a  greater  ensemble.  As  the  authors  of  The 
Censure  of  the  Rota  less  charitably  put  it,  "An  heroic 
poem  never  sounded  so  nobly,  as  when  it  was  height- 
ened with  shouts,  and  clashing  of  swords;  .  .  .  drums 
and  trumpets  gained  an  absolute  dominion  over  the 
mind  of  the  audience  (the  ladies,  and  female  spirits) ; 
.  .  .  Mr.  Dryden  would  never  have  had  the  courage 
to  have  ventured  on  a  Conquest  had  he  not  writ  with 
the  sound  of  drum  and  trumpet."  The  Indian  Em- 
peror (1665)  made  the  first  great  impact  upon  Eng- 
lish ears.  The  Wild  Gallant  (1663),  in  prose,  and 
The  Rival  Ladies  (1664),  in  glib  Fletcherian  blank 
verse,  had  contained  only  a  few  perfunctory  couplets; 
and  The  Indian  Queen  (1664),  almost  entirely  the 
work  of  Sir  Robert  Howard,  had  lacked  rhythmical 
plunge  although  it  was  composed  throughout  in 
couplets  or  quatrains.  The  Indian  Emperor  must 
have  sounded  suddenly  and  loudly  like  a  gong. 
Dryden  broke  forth  in  it  with  consummate  rhetoric, 
consummate  bluff,  and  consummate  rhyme.  The 
secret  of  the  spell  which  it  cast  lay  in  its  pound- 
ing regularity  of  cadence  and  its  unfailing  emphasis 
upon  the  rhyme  even  at  the  expense  of  sense  and 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  in 

natural  word  order.  Whether  a  scene  is  being 
sketched  from  Nature  after  the  manner  of  some 
Latin  poet  or  whether  a  nervous  argument  is  being 
thrummed  out  of  Dryden's  own  vocabulary,  the 
cadences  never  cease  to  pound  or  the  rhymes  to 
ring.  Montezuma  demands  of  his  son  Guyomar: 

I  sent  thee  to  the  frontiers;  quickly  tell 
The  cause  of  thy  return;  are  all  things  well? 

Guyomar  describes  the  appearance  of  the  Spanish 
vessels: 

I  went,  in  order,  sir,  to  your  command, 

To  view  the  utmost  limits  of  the  land; 

To  that  sea-shore  where  no  more  world  is  found; 

But  foaming  billows  breaking  on  the  ground; 

Where,  for  a  while,  my  eyes  no  object  met, 

But  distant  skies  that  in  the  ocean  set; 

And  low-hung  clouds  that  dipt  themselves  in  rain. 

To  shake  their  fleeces  on  the  earth  again. 

At  last,  as  far  as  I  could  cast  my  eyes 

Upon  the  sea,  somewhat  methought  did  rise, 

Like  blueish  mists,  which  still  appearing  more, 

Took  dreadful  shapes,  and  moved  towards  the  shore. 

There  is  not  a  single  departure  here  from  the  iambic 
norm;  the  diversity  which  Dryden  had  already 
achieved  in  the  early  complimentary  poems  is 
thrown  away.  But  we  are  compensated  by  a  more 
powerful  ground-rhythm  than  has  been  heard  be- 
fore. It  was  this  metrical  bound  which  was  the  dis- 
covery and  glory  of  the  heroic  plays.  It  was  exactly 
this  which  was  to  give  spring  to  Augustan  heroic 


ii2         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

verse.  The  theological  disputation  between  Mon- 
tezuma  and  the  Christian  priests  in  Act  V  is  a  good 
example  of  Dryden's  controversial  chime;  and  the 
second  scene  of  the  first  act  sees  Cydaria  and  Cortez 
falling  in  love  in  heroic  quatrains: 

Cydaria.    My  father's  gone,  and  yet  I  cannot  go; 

Sure  I  have  something  lost  or  left  behind! 

(Aside) 

Cortez.        Like  travellers  who  wander  in  the  snow, 
I  on  her  beauty  gaze  'till  I  am  blind. 

(Aside) 

The  Maiden  Queen  (1667),  in  excellent  prose  and  de- 
cent blank  verse,  admitted  a  few  rhymes  which 
were  out  of  place  and  in  no  way  impressive.  Tyran- 
nic Love  (1669)  brought  back  the  old  rage.  In  the 
preface  to  the  printed  version  of  1670  Dryden 
described  the  effect  which  he  believed  his  verse  to 
have:  "By  the  harmony  of  words  we  elevate  the 
mind  to  a  sense  of  devotion,  as  our  solemn  music, 
which  is  inarticulate  poesy,  does  in  churches."  In 
the  second  act  there  is  a  doctrinal  war  between  St. 
Catherine  and  Maximin  the  Tyrant,  and  in  general 
there  is  a  vast  deal  of  splendid  absurdity.  The  two 
parts  of  The  Conquest  of  Granada  (1670),  which 
drew  Dryden  out  to  his  fullest  length,  are  justly 
famous.  They  are  The  Indian  Emperor  in  full  and 
double  bloom.  It  is  unnecessary  to  quote  more 
than  a  dozen  lines:  four  to  show  the  hero  and  the 
heroine  in  give-and-take: 

Almahide:    My  light  will  sure  discover  those  who  talk — 
Who  dares  to  interrupt  my  private  walk? 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  113 

Almanwr:    He,  who  dares  love,  and  for  that  love  must 

die, 
And,  knowing  this,  dares  yet  love  on,  am  I; 

and  eight  to  illustrate  a  new  cumulative  energy  in 
Dryden  which  demands  enjambement  and  elevates 
the  verse  to  another  level  of  music:  Almanzor  re- 
plies to  Lyndaraxa,  who  has  made  advances, 

Fair  though  you  are 

As  summer  mornings,  and  your  eyes  more  bright 
Than  stars  that  twinkle  in  a  winter's  night; 
Though  you  have  eloquence  to  warm  and  move 
Cold  age,  and  praying  hermits,  into  love; 
Though  Almahide  with  scorn  rewards  my  care; 
Yet,  than  to  change,  'tis  nobler  to  despair. 
My  love's  my  soul;  and  that  from  fate  is  free; 
'Tis  that  unchanged  and  deathless  part  of  me. 

There  is  a  rise  here,  with  no  corresponding  fall, 
that  denotes  new  technical  powers.  The  next  rhym- 
ing play,  or  "opera,"  as  it  was  called,  the  State  of 
Innocence,  carried  on  further  experiments  in  archi- 
tectural verse.1  Triplets  and  Alexandrines  added 
embroidery  to  trie  old  pattern,  which  perhaps  now 
seemed  a  little  plain.  Raphael  tells  Adam  of  the 
home  he  is  to  find  in  Paradise : 

A  mansion  is  provided  thee,  more  fair 
Than  this,  and  worthy  Heaven's  peculiar  care; 
Not  framed  of  common  earth,  nor  fruits,  nor  flowers 
Of  vulgar  growth,  but  like  celestial  bowers; 
The  soil  luxuriant,  and  the  fruit  divine, 
Where  golden  apples  on  green  branches  shine, 
And  purple  grapes  dissolve  into  immortal  wine; 
1  See  Chapter  VI. 


ii4         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

For  noon-day's  heat  are  closer  arbours  made, 
And  for  fresh  evening  air  the  opener  glade. 
Ascend;  and,  as  we  go, 
More  wonders  thou  shalt  know. 

The  well-known  prologue  to  Aureng-Zebe  (1675), 
Dryden's  last  heroic  tragedy,  struck  off  the  fetters 
of  rhyme  in  drama,  and  thereafter  no  more  rhyme 
was  used,  except  for  a  few  tail-speeches  in  (Edipus 
(1679)  and  The  Duke  of  Guise  (1682),  until  the  last 
three  plays  of  all,  Amphitryon  (1690),  Cleomenes 
(1692),  and  Love  Triumphant  (1694),  into  each  of 
which  a  few  rocking  scenes  were  allowed  to  enter. 
"According  to  the  opinion  of  Harte,"  said  Dr. 
Johnson,  "who  had  studied  his  works  with  great 
attention,  he  settled  his  principles  of  versification  in 
the  .  .  .  play  of  Aureng-Zebe."  What  this  means  is 
not  clear;  nor  is  it  true  to  the  extent  that  it  can  be 
used  to  explain  the  versification  of  a  poem  like  The 
Hind  and  the  Panther.  Aureng-Zebe  still  comes  short 
of  the  political  poems  in  pliability.  Yet  advances 
have  been  made  over  The  Indian  Emperor.  Under 
the  influence  of  Shakespeare's  blank  verse,  and  fol- 
lowing up  the  various  licenses  with  which  he  had 
distinguished  the  State  of  Innocence,  Dryden  has 
arrived  in  Aureng-Zebe  at  a  limper,  more  natural 
texture  of  rhyme  than  he  had  achieved  before  in  any 
play.  Nourmahal  tells  the  hero: 

I  saw  with  what  a  brow  you  braved  your  fate; 

Yet  with  what  mildness  bore  your  father's  hate. 

My  virtue,  like  a  string  wound  up  by  art 

To  the  same  sound,  when  yours  was  touched,  took  part, 

At  distance  shook,  and  trembled  at  my  heart. 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  115 

The  rhymed  plays  alone  did  not  bring  Dryden  to  his 
metrical  maturity.  The  prologues  and  epilogues 
which  he  wrote  to  accompany  them  contributed 
an  important,  racy,  vocal  note  which  their  dialogue 
never  contained.  And  blank  verse,  though  the 
connection  between  it  and  Dryden's  rhyme  is  not 
easy  to  make,  was  also  a  valuable  school  for  style. 
His  earlier  blank  verse  is  not  significant,  being  easy 
and  banal  in  the  late  Elizabethan  way,  so  that  the 
printer  was  as  likely  as  not  to  set  it  up  for  prose; 
verse  of  this  sort  may  be  found  in  The  Rival  Ladies, 
The  Maiden  Queen,  The  Tempest  (1667),  An  Even- 
ings Love  (1668),  Marriage  a  la  Mode  (1672), 
The  Assignation  (1672),  and  Amboyna  (1673).  It 
was  not  until  All  for  Love  (1678),  and  the  ensuing 
pair  of  tragedies  composed  in  the  light  of  French 
ideals,  (Edipus  and  Troilus  and  Cressida  (1679), 
that  Dryden  attained  to  any  remarkable  justice 
or  roundness  in  his  blank  verse.  The  style  of  All 
for  Love  is  virtually  impeccable;  it  has  made  the 
play.  It  is  richly  and  closely  woven,  but  it  is  ab- 
solutely clear,  and  it  bears  no  traces  of  compla- 
cency in  composition.  The  Spanish  Friar  (1681) 
sought  again  the  Fletcherian  levels  of  conversation, 
as  did  Amphitryon  in  1690.  In  Don  Sebastian  (1690) 
and  Cleomenes  (1692)  Dryden  reverted  to  what  he 
believed  to  be  an  Elizabethan  "roughness  of  the 
numbers  and  cadences,"  even  departing  here  and 
there  into  a  veritable  Marstonian  crabbedness.  In 
general,  all  that  can  be  said  of  his  blank  verse  is 
that  it  gave  him  ample  training  in  the  manipula- 
tion of  phrases.  It  made  no  direct  contribution  to 


ii6         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

what  is  after  all  of  most  consequence  in  him,  his 
fund  of  knowledge  about  the  heroic  couplet. 

It  is  not  a  simple  matter  to  calculate  the  influence 
of  France  on  Dryden's  style  after  about  1675,  but 
one  may  be  sure  that  the  influence  was  of  no  small 
account.  French  characteristics  in  English  manners 
and  English  expression  throughout  the  last  three- 
quarters  of  the  seventeenth  century  have  often 
been  exaggerated  by  historians,  yet  their  signifi- 
cance cannot  be  brought  in  question.  Under 
Charles  I,  after  his  marriage  to  Henrietta  Maria  of 
France,  there  had  bloomed  faintly  but  truly  the 
precieuse  spirit  of  the  Hotel  de  Rambouillet,  with 
its  dilettante  elegance.  During  the  Commonwealth 
the  Royalist  exiles  to  France  had  seen  a  good  deal  of 
the  best  refinement  which  the  continent  possessed. 
And  with  the  Restoration  there  had  flooded  back 
across  the  Channel  a  strong  tide  of  Gallic  modern- 
ism, involving  new  fashions  of  costume,  carriage, 
conduct,  cooking,  new  ideas  of  medicine,  painting, 
architecture,  music,  dancing,  new  accents  in  culti- 
vated speech,  and  a  new  impatience  with  heavy 
learning  and  staid  chivalry.  Most  of  what  was  im- 
possible in  the  new  fashions  soon  disappeared  from 
English  life  under  the  pressure  of  ridicule.  The 
best  remained;  and  beginning  about  1675  a  really 
solid  set  of  improvements  were  made  in  taste  and 
speech  under  the  triple  guidance  of  the  French  for- 
mal criticism  of  men  like  Le  Bossu,  the  French  good 
sense  of  Rapin  and  Boileau,  and  the  French  "taste" 
of  which  Longinus  had  been  found  to  be  the  best 
expression.  As  far  back  as  1668  Dryden  had  shown 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  117 

himself  in  the  Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy  to  be  famil- 
iar with  the  critical  works  of  Sarrasin,  Le  Mes- 
nardiere,  Chapelain,  and  Corneille;  and  it  is  to  be 
supposed  that  subsequently  he  had  kept  well  abreast 
of  the  literary  developments  in  France,  for  he 
was  one  of  the  first  Englishmen  during  the  fol- 
lowing decade  to  acclaim  Rapin  and  Boileau. 
Rapin  sems  to  have  found  at  all  times  a  ready  au- 
dience in  England.  His  Reflections  upon  the  Use  of  the 
Eloquence  of  these  Times  appeared  at  Oxford  in  1672, 
his  Comparison  of  Plato  and  Aristotle  at  London  in 
1673,  and  his  Reflections  on  Aristotle's  Treatise  of 
Poesie  at  London  in  1674,  the  same  year  that  it  was 
published  in  Paris.  Dry  den  drew  upon  the  last 
work  for  the  famous  definition  of  wit  with  which  he 
closed  his  Apology  for  Heroic  Poetry  and  Poetic  Li- 
cense in  1677,  "a  propriety  of  thoughts  and  words." 
Thomas  Rymer  was  Rapin's  translator;  the  French- 
man and  the  Englishman  between  them  gradually 
led  Dryden  to  give  a  classical  turn  to  tragedy  and  to 
renounce  his  pristine  "bladdered  greatness."  The 
year  1674  was  remarkable  in  France  for  the  publica- 
tion of  five  new  works  by  Boileau:  the  second  and 
third  Epistles,  the  first  four  books  of  the  Lutrin,  the 
Art  Poetique,  and  the  translation  of  Longinus.  Dry- 
den  became  acquainted  with  at  least  the  fourth  and 
fifth  of  these  almost  immediately  upon  their  appear- 
ance. He  was  powerfully  moved  by  the  Longinus, 
which  it  seems  he  had  not  known  in  John  Hall's 
English  translation  of  1652;  and  the  Art  Poetique 
never  ceased  to  appeal  to  him  as  a  magazine  of  max- 
ims. Dryden  was  in  an  important  degree  responsi- 


ii8         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

ble  for  Boileau's  vogue  in  England  through  his  collab- 
oration with  Sir  William  Soame  in  1680-1  upon  a 
translation  of  the  Art  of  Poetry.  Up  to  that  time 
Boileau's  effect  had  been  felt  chiefly  in  satire;  Ether- 
ege,  Buckingham,  Rochester,  Butler,  and  Oldham  in 
turn  had  imitated  him  in  that  department.  Now  it 
was  Boileau's  whole  outlook  which  was  transferred  to 
England.  Now  it  was  that  the  accepted  meanings  of 
"wit"  and  "sense"  and  "nature"  and  "the  classics" 
began  to  draw  together;  now  it  was  that  English 
speech  and  English  writing  in  all  their  parts  began 
to  seem  nearly  civilized.  The  Earl  of  Mulgrave's 
E,ssay  Upon  Poetry  (1682)  and  the  Earl  of  Ros- 
common's  Essay  on  Translated  Verse  (1684),  two 
sensible  poems  in  the  manner  of  Horace  and  Boil- 
eau,  stamped  aristocratic  approval  upon  the  French- 
man's creeds  at  the  same  time  that  they  spoke 
his  language  and  breathed  his  spirit.  Almost  the 
first  of  English  verse-essays,  they  set  the  stand- 
ard of  decency  and  urbanity  to  which  Augustans 
were  continually  returning  over  the  next  three  or 
four  decades.  St.  Evremond,  the  French  exile  who 
spent  the  greater  part  of  his  life  in  London,  was 
another  Gallic  influence  on  Dryden.  In  1683,  in  the 
Life  of  Plutarch,  Dryden  remarked  that  he  had 
been  "casually  casting  [his]  eye  on  the  works  of  a 
French  gentleman,  deservedly  famous  for  wit  and 
criticism."  This  was  St.  Evremond,  who  began  in 
1685  to  make  his  appearance  in  English  print.  St. 
Evremond  was  not  a  profound  gentleman,  but  he 
was  a  believer  in  conversation,  and  his  emphasis 
upon  the  choicer  phases  of  intercourse  went  not  with- 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  119 

out  its  effect  on  Dryden,  who,  it  will  be  remembered, 
"was  not  a  very  genteel  man." 

Dryden's  best  style,  then,  the  style  of  the  i68o's, 
the  style  of  Absalom  and  Achitophel,  the  Religio 
Laid,  and  The  Hind  and  the  Panther,  owed  a  good 
deal  to  France.  The  debt  was  to  French  criticism 
and  to  French  ideals  exquisitely  expressed  rather 
than  to  any  French  poetry  that  Dryden  read.  The 
thinking  which  he  was  led  by  Rapin  and  Boileau  and 
Longinus  to  do,  and  the  conviction  which  they 
forced  upon  him  that  adequacy  of  expression  is  the 
first  and  last  rule  of  writing,  bore  fruit,  if  only  di- 
rectly, in  the  great  satires  and  ratiocinative  poems. 
But  French  poetry  itself  never  had  Dryden's  re- 
spect. "Impartially  speaking,"  he  wrote  in  the 
dedication  of  the  ASneis,  "the  French  are  as  much 
better  critics  than  the  English  as  they  are  worse 
poets."  His  habit  of  depreciation  he  had  con- 
tracted in  the  Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy,  where  the 
regularity  of  the  French  had  been  declared  too  thin 
for  English  blood.  A  number  of  prologues  in  the 
next  decade  cordially  damned  French  farce  and 
opera.  Doralice,  in  Marriage  a  la  Mode,  says  to 
Palamede:  "You  are  an  admirer  of  the  dull  French 
poetry,  which  is  so  thin,  that  it  is  the  very  leaf-gold 
of  wit,  the  very  wafers  and  whipped  cream  of  sense, 
for  which  a  man  opens  his  mouth  and  gapes,  to 
swallow  nothing;  and  to  be  an  admirer  of  such  pro- 
found dulness,  one  must  be  endowed  with  a  great 
perfection  of  impudence  and  ignorance."  In  the 
Argument  to  his  Sixth  Juvenal  Dryden  compared 
the  French  affectations  of  his  England  with  the 


120         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Greek  affectations  of  the  early  Roman  empire.  In 
the  dedication  of  the  JEneis  he  made  the  compari- 
son between  the  French  greyhound  and  the  English 
mastiff  which  already  has  been  quoted.1  "The 
affected  purity  of  the  French  has  unsinewed  their 
heroic  verse,"  he  declared.  He  was  by  no  means 
alone  in  this  dislike.  The  distaste  for  French  "thin- 
ness" was  common.  Oldham  condemned  it  in  his 
poem  on  Ben  Jonson,  and  Roscommon  wrote  in  his 
Essay: 

But  who  did  ever  in  French  authors  see 

The  comprehensive  English  Energy? 

The  weighty  Bullion  of  one  Sterling  Line, 

Drawn  to  French  Wire,  would  thro'  whole  Pages  shine. 

The  French  themselves  were  ready  to  admit  a  dis- 
tinction. Rymer's  translation  of  Rapin's  Reflec- 
tions in  1674  contained  a  confession,  taken  literally 
from  Rapin,  that  the  "beauty"  of  "number  and 
harmony"  is  "unknown  to  the  French  tongue, 
where  all  the  syllables  are  counted  in  the  verses,  and 
where  there  is  no  diversity  of  cadence."  Englishmen 
have  always  been  proud  of  the  difference  between 
French  verse  and  their  own,  a  difference  which  has 
been  used  at  various  times  to  point  various  morals; 
in  Dryden's  time  it  was  the  last  refuge  of  those  who, 
like  Dryden  himself,  leaned  upon  the  tradition  of 
English  magnificence  and  steadfastly  refused  to 
recognize  a  thinning  in  the  contemporary  product. 

Two-thirds  of  Dryden's  non-dramatic  verse  con- 
sisted of  translations  from  the  classics.    It  is  not  to 

1  See  page  43. 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  121 

be  supposed  that  so  much  labor  was  without  im- 
portant results.  The  sheer  experience  involved  in 
composing  some  twenty  thousand  couplets  was 
bound  either  to  intrench  him  in  whatever  ground  of 
style  he  already  occupied  or  to  draw  him  forward 
onto  new  surfaces  of  expression.  It  did  both  things; 
but  more  often  it  did  the  first.  More  often  than 
not  Dryden  failed  to  learn  anything  by  his  trans- 
lating. Doing  most  of  it  under  pressure  from  the 
printers,  he  missed  that  margin  of  leisure  which 
allows  reflection  and  experimentation.  As  a  rule 
Dryden  performed  well  under  pressure;  but  there 
are  limits,  which  in  Dryden' s  case  meant  that  he 
was  reduced  to  turning  out  a  great  number  of  stale 
and  undistinguished  lines.  Yet  in  a  respectable 
number  of  instances  he  did  unquestionably  enlarge 
himself  through  his  identification  with  ancient 
masters,  so  that  in  translating  them  he  produced 
what  cannot  be  considered  other  than  great  orig- 
inal poems.  Domestication  of  Greek  and  Roman 
writers  was  the  order  of  the  day  in  England.  A 
society  whose  cultivated  members  lived  exclusively, 
without  warm  vision  and  without  much  concern 
for  problems  that  pressed,  was  pleased  to  feed  on 
echoes  of  past  grandeur  and  to  take  frequent  ac- 
count of  that  "stock  of  life,"  as  St.  Evremond 
affectionately  called  it,  which  the  classics  furnished 
in  circumscribed  and  compendious  form.  Thomas 
Creech's  Lucretius,  Horace,  and  Theocritus  in  1682 
and  1684  were  marks  of  the  rising  tide  in  trans- 
lation which  was  to  sweep  Dryden  and  Jacob  Ton- 
son  on  to  their  great  successes.  Dryden  believed 


122         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

that  a  translator  was  bound  in  all  honor  to  enter 
generously  into  the  spirit  of  his  original  and  pre- 
sent him  fairly  as  the  individual  which  he  once 
had  been.  His  prefaces  abound  in  distinctions 
nicely  maintained  between  Homer  and  Virgil,  Ju- 
venal and  Persius,  Juvenal  and  Horace,  Virgil  and 
Ovid,  and  so  on.  He  had  a  true  translator's 
conscience,  and  liked  to  think  that  for  the  time 
being  he  and  his  masters  were  "congenial  souls." 
But  he  seldom  succeeded  in  bestowing  individuality 
anywhere;  his  translations  read  very  much  alike; 
only  his  Juvenal  and  his  Lucretius  are  really  living 
men.  Altogether  he  turned  his  hand  to  eight  of 
the  ancients:  Ovid,  Theocritus,  Lucretius,  Horace, 
Juvenal,  Persius,  Virgil,  and  Homer. 

He  began  with  Ovid  in  1680,  when  he  contributed 
three  pieces  to  a  volume  of  Translations  from  Ovid's 
Epistles.  He  was  always  an  admirer  of  Ovid's 
fertility,  and  of  his  faculty  for  "continually  varying 
the  same  sense  an  hundred  ways,"  but  his  admira- 
tion in  general  was  tempered  by  a  conviction  that 
the  author  of  the  Metamorphoses  was  a  cheaper  man 
then  Virgil.  He  lacked  taste;  "he  never  knew  how 
to  give  over,  when  he  had  done  well."  Only  rarely 
did  Dryden  translate  him  with  distinction.  The 
three  Epistles  of  1680  were  loose  and  Latinistic.  A 
brisker  piece,  the  nineteenth  elegy  of  the  second 
book  of  the  Amores,  appeared  in  Tonson's  first 
Miscellany  in  1684.  The  third  Miscellany,  called 
Examen  Poeticum,  which  was  published  in  1693, 
contained  Dryden's  version  of  the  entire  first  book 
of  the  Metamorphoses  and  the  "fables"  of  I  phis  and 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  123 

lanthe  and  Ads,  Polyphemus  and  Galatea,  from  the 
ninth  and  thirteenth  books  respectively.  From 
only  one  passage  in  the  three  poems  does  genius 
emerge;  the  impassioned  speech  of  Polyphemus  to 
Galatea  is  in  Dryden's  best  vein  of  suasion.  The 
Art  of  Love  and  the  first  and  fourth  elegies  of  the 
first  book  of  the  Amores  were  done  by  Dryden 
while  he  was  occupied  with  his  Virgil;  they  were 
not  printed  during  his  lifetime.  The  Fables  found  him 
in  better  form,  yet  even  in  that  venerable  volume 
the  Ovidian  poems  are  the  least  engaging.  Dryden 
learned  speed  and  audacity  from  Ovid,  but  nothing 
richer.  It  has  been  Ovid's  narrative  materials  rather 
than  his  personal  qualities  that  have  fired  the  mod- 
ern poets;  his  stories  are  inexhaustible,  but  his  ex- 
terior too  often  glitters  and  leaves  one  cold. 

Dryden's  four  Idylls  from  Theocritus,  the  third, 
the  eighteenth,  the  twenty-third,  and  the  twenty- 
seventh,  printed  in  the  first  and  second  Miscellanies 
of  1684  and  1685,  professed  to  speak  in  the  "Doric 
dialect"  which  Dryden  thought  had  "an  incompar- 
able sweetness  in  its  clownishness,  like  a  fair  shep- 
herdess in  her  country  russet,  talking  in  a  York- 
shire tone."  The  dialect  is  difficult  to  distinguish 
from  Dryden's  customary  language.  When  Theoc- 
ritus writes  simply,  "O  dark  eye-browed  maiden 
mine,"  Dryden  writes, 

O  Nymph,  .  .  . 

Whose  radiant  eyes  your  ebon  brows  adorn, 

Like  midnight  those  and  these  like  break  of  morn. 

This  is  handsome,  but  its  sound  is  that  of  a  trumpet 


124         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

rather  than  that  of  a  shepherd's  pipe.  Dryden 
never  can  be  said  to  have  expanded  his  poetic  per- 
sonality so  as  to  include  the  rare  Sicilian. 

Dryden's  Lucretius  is  another  story.  What  he 
tried  to  reproduce  in  Lucretius  was  a  certain  "noble 
pride,  and  positive  assertion  of  his  opinions."  His 
success  was  signal  in  at  least  two  out  of  the  five 
selections  which  he  chose  to  translate  for  the  second 
Miscellany  in  1685.  His  passages  from  the  second 
and  third  books  of  the  De  Rerum  Natura  must  be 
numbered  among  the  most  convincing  specimens  of 
ratiocinative  poetry  in  any  language.  The  spirit  of 
the  Roman  has  invaded  and  actually  moved  the 
Englishman;  for  a  time  he  is  another  person.  These 
lines  on  the  fear  of  death  are  executed  with  a  new 
delicacy  and  a  new  precision: 

We,  who  are  dead  and  gone,  shall  bear  no  part 

In  all  the  pleasures,  nor  shall  feel  the  smart 

Which  to  that  other  mortal  shall  accrue, 

Whom  of  our  matter  time  shall  mold  anew. 

For  backward  if  you  look  on  that  long  space 

Of  ages  past,  and  view  the  changing  face 

Of  matter,  tossed  and  variously  combined 

In  sundry  shapes,  'tis  easy  for  the  mind 

From  thence  t'  infer,  that  seeds  of  things  have  been 

In  the  same  order  as  they  now  are  seen; 

Which  yet  our  dark  remembrance  cannot  trace, 

Because  a  pause  of  life,  a  gaping  space, 

Has  come  betwixt,  where  memory  lies  dead, 

And  all  the  wandering  motions  from  the  sense  are  fled. 

For  whose'er  shall  in  misfortunes  live, 

Must  be,  when  those  misfortunes  shall  arrive; 

And  since  the  man  who  is  not,  feels  not  woe, 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  125 

(For  death  exempts  him,  and  wards  off  the  blow, 
Which  we,  the  living,  only  feel  and  bear,) 
What  is  there  left  for  us  in  death  to  fear? 
When  once  that  pause  of  life  has  come  between, 
'Tis  just  the  same  as  we  had  never  been. 

The  skill  with  which  the  movement  of  the  verse  is 
made  to  correspond  to  the  progress  and  the  outline 
of  the  idea  can  quite  reasonably  be  called  inspired. 
Dryden  has  learned  much  from  Lucretius.  This 
poem  on  the  fear  of  death  is  Dryden's  own. 

It  is  rather  to  be  regretted  that  Dryden  never 
imitated  the  satires  of  Horace  as  Pope  did.  He 
touched  only  three  odes  and  an  epode,  versions  of 
which  appeared  under  his  name  in  the  second  Mis- 
cellany of  1685.  The  pieces  are  of  no  consequence 
in  connection  with  the  present  inquiry.  Dryden 
could  not  possibly  succeed  in  miniatures.  The 
twenty-ninth  ode  of  the  third  book  he  made  one  of 
his  masterpieces,  but  only  by  transforming  it  into  a 
Pindaric  ode  and  so  egregiously  distending  it.1  He 
required  more  space  than  Horace  ever  would  allow. 

The  five  satires  of  Juvenal  which  Dryden  pub- 
lished in  1693  along  with  the  whole  of  Persius  are  a 
triumph  quite  comparable  to  the  Lucretius.  In  the 
Discourse  with  which  he  prefaced  the  volume  he 
analyzed  what  he  had  found  to  be  the  distinction  of 
Juvenal,  his  impetuosity.  The  five  satires  as  he 
gave  them  are  not  only  impetuous;  they  are  close 
and  powerful.  A  full  weight  of  brutal  wrath  bears 
down  upon  the  antitheses  and  the  rhymes.  There  is 
no  tender  enjambement;  the  couplets  thump  and 

1  See  Chapter  VI. 


126         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

crackle.  The  sixth,  against  women,  is  one  of  the 
most  terrible  poems  in  English.  It  cannot  be  quoted 
where  quotation  would  most  score;  the  opening  gives 
only  a  taste  of  that  which  follows: 

In  Saturn's  reign,  at  Nature's  early  birth, 

There  was  that  thing  called  Chastity  on  earth; 

When  in  a  narrow  cave,  their  common  shade, 

The  sheep,  the  shepherds,  and  their  gods  were  laid; 

When  reeds,  and  leaves,  and  hides  of  beasts  were  spread 

By  mountain  huswifes  for  their  homely  bed, 

And  mossy  pillows  raised,  for  the  rude  husband's  head. 

Unlike  the  niceness  of  our  modern  dames, 

(Affected  nymphs  with  new  affected  names,) 

The  Cynthias  and  the  Lesbias  of  our  years, 

Who  for  a  sparrow's  death  dissolve  in  tears; 

Those  first  unpolished  matrons,  big  and  bold, 

Gave  suck  to  infants  of  gigantic  mold; 

Rough  as  their  savage  lords  who  ranged  the  wood, 

And  fat  with  acorns  belched  their  windy  food. 

The  largeness  of  these  lines  is  not  specious.  Dry- 
den  has  developed  another  voice  while  in  the  com- 
pany of  Juvenal. 

Dryden  began  to  work  with  Virgil  as  early  as  the 
first  Miscellany  in  1684,  when  he  contributed  to 
that  volume  translations  of  the  fourth  and  ninth 
Pastorals.  The  fourth  Pastoral  as  he  allowed  it  to 
be  printed  was  extremely  licentious  metrically,  and 
an  unworthy  performance.  The  ninth  was  full  of 
a  fresh  melody  which  at  once  cast  a  shade  over 
John  Ogilby's  Firgil,  a  respectable  and  often  sump- 
tuously printed  work  which  had  appeared  first  in 
1649  and  which  up  until  Dryden's  folio  was  not 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  127 

superseded.  Ogilby  had  been  stingy  and  literal. 
Where  Virgil's  Moeris  says  regretfully: 

Omnia  fert  aetas,  animum  quoque;  saepe  ego  longos 
Cantando  puerum  memini  me  condere  soles: 
Nunc  oblita  mihi  tot  carmina,  vox  quoque  Moerim 
lam  fugit  ipsa;  lupi  Moerim  videre  priores, 

Ogilby's  says: 

Age  all  things  wastes,  and  spends  our  lively  heat. 
I  but  a  boy,  could  singing  set  the  sun. 
Now  all  those  notes  are  lost,  and  my  voice  gone; 
A  wolf  saw  Moeris  first; 

while  Dryden's  shepherd  sings: 

The  rest  I  have  forgot;  for  cares  and  time 
Change  all  things,  and  untune  my  soul  to  rhyme. 
I  could  have  once  sung  down  a  summer's  sun; 
But  now  the  chime  of  poetry  is  done; 
My  voice  grows  hoarse;  I  feel  the  notes  decay, 
As  if  the  wolves  had  seen  me  first  today. 

Dryden  seems  keenly  to  have  relished  his  occupa- 
tion with  the  pastorals  of  Virgil,  and  it  was  by  no 
means  seldom  that  he  achieved  therein  a  sweet  and 
shining  clarity.  In  the  second  eclogue  his  Corydon 
thus  runs  over  the  favors  which  the  nymphs  will 
bestow  upon  Alexis: 

White  lilies  in  full  canisters  they  bring, 

With  all  the  glories  of  the  purple  spring. 

The  daughters  of  the  flood  have  searched  the  mead 

For  violets  pale,  and  cropped  the  poppy's  head, 

The  short  narcissus  and  fair  daffodil, 

Pansies  to  please  the  sight,  and  cassia  sweet  to  smell; 


128         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

And  set  soft  hyacinths  with  iron-blue, 

To  shade  marsh  marigolds  of  shining  hue; 

Some  bound  in  order,  others  loosely  strewed, 

To  dress  thy  bower,  and  trim  thy  new  abode. 

Myself  will  search  our  planted  grounds  at  home, 

For  downy  peaches  and  the  glossy  plum; 

And  thrash  the  chestnuts  in  the  neighbouring  grove, 

Such  as  my  Amaryllis  used  to  love; 

The  laurel  and  the  myrtle  sweets  agree; 

And  both  in  nosegays  shall  be  bound  for  thee. 

The  second  Miscellany  in  1685  contained  versions 
by  Dryden  of  three  episodes  from  the  JEneid:  the 
episode  of  Nisus  and  Euryalus,  from  the  fifth  and 
ninth  books,  the  episode  of  Mezentius  and  Lausus 
from  the  tenth,  and  the  speech  of  Venus  to  Vulcan 
from  the  eighth.  The  third  Georgic  was  inserted 
in  the  fourth  Miscellany  of  1694;  and  three  years 
later  the  complete  folio  itself  issued  from  Jacob 
Tonson's  shop  with  all  the  pomp  of  a  state  event. 
Dryden  had  come  very  near  to  despair  more  than 
once  while  he  was  engaged  with  Virgil.  "Some  of 
our  countrymen,"  he  explained  to  the  Earl  of  Mul- 
grave,  "have  translated  episodes  and  other  parts  of 
Virgil,  with  great  success;  ...  I  say  nothing  of  Sir 
John  Denham,  Mr.  Waller,  and  Mr.  Cowley;  'tis 
the  utmost  of  my  ambition  to  be  thought  their 
equal  .  .  .  but  'tis  one  thing  to  take  pains  on  a  frag- 
ment, and  translate  it  perfectly;  and  another  thing 
to  have  the  weight  of  a  whole  author  on  my  shoul- 
ders." "I  do  not  find  myself  capable  of  trans- 
lating so  great  an  author,"  he  wrote  to  Tonson;  and 
in  the  dedication  of  the  jEneis  he  admitted  that  he 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  129 

had  done  "great  wrong  to  Virgil  in  the  whole 
translation,"  offering  as  reasons  "want  of  time,  the 
inferiority  of  our  language,  the  inconvenience  of 
rhyme."  By  his  own  confession,  he  kept  the  manu- 
script of  the  Earl  of  Lauderdale's  translation  by  him 
and  "consulted  it  as  often  as  I  doubted  of  my  auth- 
or's sense,"  or  as  often,  more  likely,  as  he  felt 
pressed  for  time.  Some  two  hundred  lines  of  that 
nobleman's  version  he  appropriated  without  any  al- 
teration at  all,  and  some  eight  hundred  came  over 
only  slightly  recast.  The  readiness  of  the  Earl  to 
place  his  work  at  the  poet's  disposal  may  be  accounted 
for  by  the  fact  that  he  himself  had  made  free  with  the 
translations  of  the  episodes  of  Nisus  and  Euryalus 
and  Mezentius  and  Lausus  as  they  had  stood  under 
Dryden's  name  since  the  Miscellany  of  1685.  There 
is  a  tradition  that  Dryden  regretted  before  he  was 
through  that  he  had  not  chosen  blank  verse  for  his 
medium.  An  jEneid  in  the  style  of  All  for  Love 
might  be  a  truly  superb  performance.  He  had  been 
advised  to  make  the  attempt.  Thomas  Fletcher,  in 
the  preface  to  his  Poems  of  1692,  had  repeated  Ros- 
common's  condemnation  of  rhyme,  and  had  sug- 
gested that  "If  a  Dryden  (a  master  of  our  Language 
and  Poetry)  would  undertake  to  translate  Virgil  in 
blank  Verse,  we  might  hope  to  read  him  with  as 
great  pleasure  in  our  Language  as  his  own."  But 
it  is  likely  that  Dryden  on  the  whole  was  satisfied 
with  his  couplets.  He  had  reasons  for  dissatisfac- 
tion with  the  poem  on  other  grounds.  It  is  vastly 
imperfect.  The  Cyclops,  the  funeral  games,  and  the 
gathering  of  the  clans  in  the  JEneis  are  handled  in  a 


130         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

manner  worthy  of  the  best  heroic  tradition,  and 
every  page  without  exception  bristles  with  energy. 
Yet  in  the  main  the  texture  of  the  verse  is  coarse; 
Dry  den  has  made  no  advance  in  subtlety  of  speech, 
he  is  only  applying  standard  formulas  and  securing 
standard  results.  Virgil  has  eluded  him  as  Lucretius 
and  Juvenal  did  not. 

Dryden  was  "fixing  his  thoughts"  on  Homer  in 
his  last  years  and  halfway  projecting  a  new  folio 
which  should  stand  as  a  companion  to  the  FirgiL 
He  had  a  notion  that  Homer  was  more  suited  to  his 
genius  than  Virgil,  since  he  was  more  "violent,  im- 
petuous, and  full  of  fire."  He  had  done  into  Eng- 
lish The  Last  Parting  of  Hector  and  Andromache  for 
the  third  Miscellany  in  1693,  and  he  included  in  the 
Fables  a  complete  version  of  the  first  book  of  the 
Iliad.  He  got  no  further  with  Homer,  which  is  to 
be  regretted;  for  although  the  two  specimens  he 
left  behind  are  neither  violent,  impetuous,  nor  full 
of  fire  in  a  preternatural  degree,  they  are  honest  and 
various  as  few  translations  are. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  Dryden  had  been 
without  his  English  masters  all  along.  Shakespeare, 
Spenser,  and  Milton  were  constantly  enriching 
him,  if  not  with  direct  gifts  then  with  less  tangi- 
ble inspirations.  His  unqualified  admiration  for 
Shakespeare  scarcely  needs  to  be  cited;  the  tributes 
to  him  which  Dryden  paid  in  the  Essay  of  Dramatic 
Poesy,  the  dedication  of  the  Rival  Ladies,  the  prologue 
to  the  Tempest,  and  the  prologue  to  Troilus  and  Cres- 
sida  are  loci  classici  of  criticism.  He  knew  the  text 
of  Shakespeare's  major  dramas  as  well  as  he  knew 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  131 

his  own  works;  his  plays  are  reminiscent,  often  only 
trivially,  in  word  and  phrase  of  Hamlet,  King  Lear, 
Macbeth,  and  Julius  Caeser.  Imitation  of  Shake- 
speare on  a  significant  scale  was  out  of  the  question, 
as  it  must  be  always;  and  it  must  be  confessed  that 
had  Shakespeare  never  written  Dryden  might  never 
have  ranted;  yet  it  is  not  unreasonable  to  derive  the 
greatest  of  the  Augustans  in  a  fairly  straight  line 
from  the  greatest  of  the  Elizabethans.  The  differ- 
ences are  huge,  but  the  line  that  joins  them  does  not 
need  to  be  broken.  Spenser  offered  gifts  of  style 
which  were  easier  to  accept  and  put  in  use.  "I 
must  acknowledge,"  wrote  Dryden  in  the  dedica- 
tion of  the  JEneis,  discussing  the  general  problem  of 
"numbers,"  "that  Virgil  in  Latin,  and  Spenser  in 
English,  have  been  my  masters."  Spenser  he  con- 
sidered in  a  degree  the  creator  of  English  harmony, 
and  Spenser's  fluency  seemed  to  him  to  the  last  a 
glorious  marvel.  Fluency  as  such  is  a  quality  which 
cannot  be  fingered  over  by  a  follower  of  influences; 
hence  its  passage  from  Spenser  into  Dryden  can  be 
better  announced  than  proved.  The  passage  did 
occur,  Spenser's  broad  current  eventually  envelop- 
ing the  little  stream  of  Waller  that  flowed  to  Dryden. 
Dryden  seems  to  have  been  thoroughly  versed  in 
the  Faerie  Queene,  Occasional  lines  clearly  recall 
its  sensitive  author,  as  these  two  from  the  Episode 
of  Nisus  and  Euryalus: 

Black  was  the  brake,  and  thick  with  oak  it  stood, 
With  fern  all  horrid,  and  perplexing  thorn. 

The  accounts  of  the  fairies  at  the  beginning  of  The 


132         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Wife  of  Bath,  Her  Tale  and  in  The  Flower  and  the 
Leaf,  in  the  Fables,  are  Chaucer  plus  Spenser  plus 
Shakespeare.  And  Thomas  Warton  pointed  out 
that  the  sleeping  Iphigenia  in  Cymon  and  Iphigenia 
owes  certain  of  her  beauties  to  the  Elizabethan  who 
best  of  all  could  paint  enchanting  forms. 

Milton's  impact  upon  Dryden  was  not  sudden, 
nor  was  his  influence  of  a  permeating  kind.  The 
two  poets  were  worlds  apart.  Yet  Dryden  was 
among  the  first  Englishmen  who  conferred  impor- 
tant honors  upon  Milton  dead;  and  his  works  re- 
flect careful  reading  not  only  of  Paradise  Lost  but  of 
the  minor  poems,  the  prose,  and  Samson  Agonistes 
as  well.  Milton's  Ode  on  the  Morning  of  Christ's 
Nativity,  as  has  been  remarked,  is  probably  respon- 
sible for  Dryden's  thirty-fifth  stanza  on  Cromwell.1 
Stanza  232  of  Annus  Mirabilis,  which  Settle  declared 
was  stolen  from  Cowley,  vaguely  recalls  Lycidas  as 
well  as  the  Davideis, 

Old  Father  Thames  raised  up  his  reverend  head, 
But  feared  the  fate  of  Simoeis  would  return; 

Deep  in  his  ooze  he  sought  his  sedgy  bed, 
And  shrunk  his  waters  back  into  his  urn, 

and  stanza  293  certainly  suggests  the  Areopagitica: 

Methinks  already,  from  this  chymick  flame, 

I  see  a  city  of  more  precious  mold; 
Rich  as  the  town  which  gives  the  Indies  name, 

With  silver  paved,  and  all  divine  with  gold. 

That  the  State  of  Innocence  is  a  tagged  Paradise 
Lost  needs  no  mention;  though  the  proverbial 

1  See  page  3. 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  133 

corollary  that  it  is  a  wretched  poem  calls  for  em- 
phatic denial.  Langbaine  pointed  out  a  borrowing 
in  Aureng-Zebe  from  Samson  Agonistes.  "Now 
give  me  leave,"  he  asked  in  his  Account  of  the  Eng- 
lish Dramatic k  Poets  (1691),  "to  give  you  one 
Instance  ...  of  his  borrowing  from  Mr.  Milton's 
Sampson  Agonistes: 

Dal.       I  see  thou  art  implacable,  more  deaf 

To  Prayers  than  winds  and  seas;  yet  winds  to  seas 
Are  reconcil'd  at  length,  and  sea  to  shore; 
Thy  anger  unappeasable  still  rages, 
Eternal  Tempest  never  to  be  calm'd. 

Emp.     Unmov'd  she  stood,  and  deaf  to  all  my  prayers, 
As  Seas  and  Winds  to  sinking  Mariners; 
But  Seas  grow  calm,  and  Winds  are  reconciled; 
Her  Tyrant  Beauty  never  grows  more  mild" 

A  still  more  interesting  levy  on  Milton's  tragedy 
was  made  by  Dryden  in  the  first  act  of  (Edipus. 
The  blind  Tiresias  comes  upon  the  stage  led  by  his 
daughter  Manto  and  addressing  her  as  follows: 

A  little  farther;  yet  a  little  farther, 
Thou  wretched  daughter  of  a  dark  old  man, 
Conduct  my  weary  steps.  .  .  .  Now  stay; 
Methinks  I  draw  more  open,  vital  air. 
Where  are  we? 

Manto:      Under  covert  of  a  wall; 

The  most  frequented  once,  and  noisy  part 
Of  Thebes;  now  midnight  silence  reigns  even 

here, 
And  grass  untrodden  springs  beneath  our  feet. 

Tiresias:    If  there  be  nigh  this  place  a  sunny  bank, 
There  let  me  rest  awhile. 


134         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Dryden  may  have  had  in  mind  here  at  least  five 
different  scenes  in  classical  tragedy.  The  spectacle 
of  a  blind  old  man  being  led  upon  the  stage  was 
familiar  to  Greek  audiences.  In  the  (Edipus  Tyran- 
nus  of  Sophocles  Tiresias  appears  hand  in  hand 
with  a  boy;  in  the  (Edipus  Coloneus  CEdipus  follows 
after  Antigone,  whom  he  pities  as  "the  wretched 
child  of  a  blind  old  man,"  and  who  conducts  him  to 
a  rocky  seat.  In  the  Phaenissez  of  Euripides  Tire- 
sias is  conducted  upon  the  scene  by  Manto,  "the  eye 
of  his  feet."  Seneca  begins  his  Phcenisstf  with  An- 
tigone leading  CEdipus,  and  in  his  (Edipus  Manto 
guides  Tiresias  along.  Dryden  may  have  had  any 
of  these  scenes  vividly  in  his  memory.  Yet  the 
opening  of  Samson  Agonistes  must  have  furnished 
him  with  certain  of  his  words,  and  must  have 
suggested  two  details  for  his  tableau  which  neither 
the  Greeks  nor  Seneca  had  provided:  the  sunny 
bank  and  the  'draughts  of  fresh  air.  Milton's  lines 
run  thus: 

Samson:      A  little  onward  lend  thy  guiding  hand 
To  these  dark  steps,  a  little  further  on; 
For  yonder  bank  hath  choice  of  sun  or  shade. 
There  I  am  wont  to  sit,  when  any  chance 
Relieves  me  from  my  task  of  servile  toil, 
Daily  in  the  common  prison  else  enjoined  me, 
Where  I,  a  prisoner  chained,  scarce  freely  draw 
The  air  imprisoned  also,  close  and  damp, 
Unwholesome  draught;  but  here  I  feel  amends, 
The  breath  of  Heav'n  fresh  blowing,  pure  and 

sweet, 
With  day-spring  born. 


THE  TRUE  FIRE  135 

The  parallel  is  of  interest  only  as  showing  that  Dry- 
den  really  knew  Milton.  The  poems  on  public 
affairs  drew  heavily  upon  Paradise  Lost  for  epic 
machinery  and  accent.  The  speeches  in  Absalom 
and  Achitophel  are  Satanic  or  Godlike  much  in  Mil- 
ton's way,  and  the  account  in  The  Hind  and  the  Pan- 
ther (II.,  499-514)  of  Christ's  accepting  in  Heaven 
the  burden  of  man's  sin  follows  Milton's  recital  in 
his  third  book  with  remarkable  fidelity.  Instances 
might  be  multiplied  without  establishing  further 
types  of  obligation.  The  obligation  was  never  spirit- 
ual; it  was  rarely  that  Dry  den  was  moved  by  any- 
thing other  than  the  diction  of  a  great  poet.  Shake- 
speare, Spenser,  Milton  remain  on  the  other  side  of 
the  world  from  Dry  den;  but  he  visits  them  and  takes 
from  them  whatever  he  can  carry  away. 

By  dint  of  manifold  experience,  then,  and  mani- 
fold discipleship,  Dryden  rolled  and  beat  into  shape 
the  poetic  medium  which  had  descended  to  him. 
But  he  did  more  than  make  that  medium  perfectly 
clear  and  strong.  He  stamped  it  peculiarly  with 
himself.  His  genius  was  for  grouping;  his  passion 
was  for  form.  He  had  above  most  poets  "that  en- 
ergy," as  Dr.  Johnson  put  it,  "which  collects,  com- 
bines, amplifies,  and  animates."  He  had  a  mind; 
he  had  grasp;  he  could  follow  a  subject  home.  His 
poems  lived.  He  loved  to  see  things  take  shape. 
At  the  beginning  of  his  dedication  of  the  Rival 
Ladies  he  told  the  Earl  of  Orrery  in  words  which 
later  haunted  the  imagination  of  Lord  Byron  that 
his  play  had  once  been  "only  a  confused  mass  of 
thoughts,  tumbling  over  one  another  in  the  dark; 


136         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

when  the  fancy  was  yet  in  its  first  work,  moving  the 
sleeping  images  of  things  towards  the  light."  As 
many  as  a  dozen  times  throughout  his  works  he 
played  with  the  notion  of  a  world  of  scattered  atoms, 
rejecting  it  for  the  image  of  a  world  composed  with 
care.  He  wrote  to  Sir  Robert  Howard  in  1660, 

This  is  a  piece  too  fair 
To  be  the  child  of  chance,  and  not  of  care; 
No  atoms  casually  together  hurled 
Could  e'er  produce  so  beautiful  a  world. 

He  insisted  that  a  good  play  could  not  be  a  heap  of 
"huddled  atoms;"  an  epic  could  never  succeed  if 
"writ  on  the  Epicurean  principles."  This  genius  of 
his  took  effect  in  two  ways.  It  made  him  a  master 
in  the  art  of  grouping  and  throwing  swiftly  together 
statements,  reasons,  instances,  implications;  it  made 
him  the  most  irresistible  discursive  and  ratiocina- 
tive  poet  in  English.  And  it  supplied  him  with  a 
powerful  rhythmical  pulse;  it  set  his  verse  rolling 
and  welling,  leaping  and  bounding;  it  established 
the  paragraph,  the  passage,  as  his  unit  of  metrical 
advance,  not  the  line  or  the  couplet;  it  made  him  a 
mighty  metrist.  Such  was  Dryden's  best  manner. 
Dryden's  best  material,  it  has  been  said,  lay  in  per- 
sonalities, actions,  ideas,  art.  The  two  in  conjunc- 
tion brought  forth  his  best  poetry,  occasional,  jour- 
nalistic, lyric,  or  narrative. 


IV 
THE  OCCASIONAL  POET 

There  is  a  sense  in  which  every  poem  that  Dry- 
den  wrote  was  occasional.  Not  sudden  convictions, 
or  happy  perceptions  of  identities  in  the  world  of 
nature  and  man,  but  circumstances  were  required 
to  draw  him  out  on  paper.  Births,  deaths,  literary 
events,  political  incidents  tapped  in  him  the  richest 
commenting  mind  that  English  poetry  has  known. 
He  is  the  celebrant,  the  signalizer  par  excellence. 
He  succeeded  Ben  Jonson,  the  other  great  occasional 
poet  of  the  seventeenth  century,  in  a  kind  of  writing 
that  was  peculiarly  Augustan.  Jonson  had  created 
the  kind  in  England,  clearing  off  a  broad  field  for  it 
and  practicing  it  with  rare  compactness  and  right- 
ness.  He  had  planted  every  variety  of  it  which  was  to 
have  a  successful  growth:  the  official  panegyric,  the 
complimentary  epistle,  the  epigram,  the  epitaph,  the 
elegy,  the  prologue,  the  epilogue.  The  growth  had 
been  rapid  before  Dryden.  The  temper  of  the  cen- 
tury had  swiftly  become  suited  to  a  sort  of  expres- 
sion aiming  "rather  at  aptitude  than  altitude,"  as 
Thomas  Jordan  put  it  in  the  dedication  of  his  Poems 
and  Songs  in  1664.  It  had  become  more  and  more 
agreeable  to  read  and  write  verses  that  suavely 
wreathed  themselves  around  plain,  social  facts. 
The  main  line  of  descent  from  Jonson  to  Dryden 


138         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

had  been  through  men  like  Cartwright  and  Waller. 
Most  of  Milton's  sonnets  had  been  occasional  poems 
of  another  order,  instinct  with  the  passions  of  am- 
bition, anger,  or  worship.  True  Augustan  verse  was 
to  be  impersonal,  containing  no  bursts  that  might 
embarrass.  Even  Milton  had  approximated  the 
type  in  his  sonnets  to  Lawes,  to  Lawrence,  and  to 
Cyriack  Skinner.  The  type  was  to  be  first  of  all 
civil.  Every  year  of  the  world  will  see  occasional 
poetry;  but  fashions  vary,  and  only  at  intervals  is 
hard  civility  the  mode.  Poets  since  Dryden  have 
been  softer,  and  have  expressed  themselves  upon  more 
precious  occasions;  upon  receiving  a  mother's  picture, 
upon  turning  up  a  field  mouse  with  a  plow,  upon 
hearing  a  lass  sing  at  her  reaping,  upon  spying  a 
primrose  by  a  river's  brim  or  a  violet  by  a  mossy 
stone,  upon  seeing  a  peasant  bent  hopelessly  over 
his  hoe,  upon  looking  into  the  eyes  of  a  harlot,  upon 
dreaming  weird  dreams,  upon  thinking  fine-spun 
thoughts.  The  Augustans  kept  such  experiences,  if 
they  had  them,  to  themselves.  Their  subjects  were 
prescribed  and  classified.  Their  minds  were  for- 
mal, stored  with  categories  and  proprieties.  Writ- 
ing upon  a  subject  meant  turning  it  over  casually  in 
the  mind  and  exposing  it  to  preconceptions.  The 
aim  was  not  at  revelation  or  surprise  but  at  the  sat- 
isfaction which  comes]  from  a  topic  perfectly  cov- 
ered. 

Dryden  was  a  great  occasional  poet  because  he 
was  more  than  merely  that.  He  was  more  than 
equal  to  his  occasions,  few  of  which  moved  him.  He 
condescended  to  them,  brought  to  them  richer 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  139 

stores  of  thought  and  melody  than  were  adequate. 
He  operated  with  self-control,  he  was  generally  dis- 
creet and  right;  yet  there  are  overtones  to  be  dis- 
tinguished in  all  his  pieces.  He  was  a  large  poet 
writing  largely  about  medium  things.  His  genius 
for  grouping  and  shaping  was  of  extraordinary  con- 
sequence here.  More  easily  than  any  other  English 
poet  he  could  assemble  ripe  clusters  of  apposite 
ideas,  rounding  them  off  by  the  pressure  of  his 
swift,  disciplined  mind  and  welding  them  into  their 
true  proportions  with  rhythm. 

If  we  disregard  for  a  moment  the  satires  and  the 
ratiocinative  poems,  which  can  better  be  considered 
by  themselves  in  connection  with  a  study  of  Dryden 
as  a  journalist  in  verse,  it  appears  that  Dryden's 
occasional  pieces  fall  into  four  divisions:  the  pan- 
egyrics, celebrating  public  events  and  compliment- 
ing public  characters;  the  epistles  and  personal  ad- 
dresses; the  epigrams,  epitaphs  and  elegies;  and  the 
prologues  and  epilogues. 

The  ten  years  between  1660  and  1670  saw  in  Eng- 
land a  flowering  of  panegyric  that  necessarily  re- 
calls certain  other  rather  distant  periods  in  the 
world's  literature.  Greeks  and  Italians  have  a  well- 
known  capacity  for  voluble  laudation;  the  classics 
are  replete  with  praise.  "The  inimitable  Pindar" 
needs  only  to  be  mentioned.  Isocrates  and  Demos- 
thenes in  ancient  Greece  and  Cicero  in  ancient 
Rome  wrote  in  a  golden  age  of  panegyrical  prose. 
Rome  saw  a  silver  age  in  the  famous  twelve  Pane- 
gyrici  Veteres  of  later  days,  among  whom  was 
Pliny  the  Younger;  Pliny's  oration  on  Trajan  Dry- 


i4o         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

den  knew  and  quoted  in  Annus  Mirabilis.  The  last 
great  Roman  poet,  Claudian,  was  a  professional 
panegyrist;  his  verses  in  praise  of  Honorius  and 
Stilicho  at  the  end  of  the  fourth  century  look  for- 
ward to  the  poetry  of  Dryden  in  respect  of  their 
fertility,  ingenuity,  and  general  temper.  The  fif- 
teenth century  in  Italy  was  a  century  of  adulation. 
A  dark  period  of  Latinity  that  interposed  itself 
between  the  brilliant  times  of  Dante,  Petrarch,  and 
Boccaccio  and  the  brilliant  times  of  Ariosto  and 
Tasso,  it  witnessed  the  reigns  of  petty  despots  who 
called  themselves  descendants  of  the  Roman  Em- 
perors and  thirsted  for  a  Roman  kind  of  praise.  The 
praise  was  forthcoming,  in  prose  and  in  verse;  the 
great  Poliziano  expended  as  much  effort  upon 
Lorenzo  de  Medici  as  he  did  upon  the  Greek  and 
Roman  poets  whom  he  so  intensely  admired.  In 
England,  Queen  Elizabeth  received  at  least  her  meed 
of  formal  flattery,  and  Prince  Henry's  death  in 
1612  was  the  occasion  for  a  veritable  Augustan 
abundance  of  eulogy.  Upon  the  occasions  of  visits 
by  James  I  to  the  universities,  the  learned  outdid 
themselves  in  hyperbole  of  welcome.  Cromwell  had 
his  Marvell  as  well  as  his  Dryden.  But  it  was  only 
with  the  return  of  Charles  II  from  France  and  the 
setting  up  of  what  was  believed  would  be  a  perma- 
nent little  social  court  that  literary  England  came 
for  a  while  to  be  something  like  literary  Rome  in  the 
fourth  century  or  like  literary  Italy  in  the  fifteenth. 
The  conditions  of  such  a  becoming  include  a  certain 
pettiness,  a  certain  exclusiveness,  a  certain  blind- 
ness, and  a  certain  pretentious  unreality  in  the  offi- 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  141 

cial  psychology.  England  during  the  first  decade 
after  the  Restoration  supplied  all  these  conditions. 
London  was  intoxicated  with  peace,  and  with  what 
it  greeted  as  an  established  order.  Not  until  after 
Clarendon's  fall,  not  until  after  confidence  in  Charles 
began  to  be  less  general,  were  larger  perspectives 
opened  up.  Not  that  panegyrics  ever  stopped  al- 
together. Southey  and  Byron  were  still  to  have 
their  turns  with  George  the  Third.  But  this  partic- 
ular Stuart  decade  must  remain  unique  in  English 
history. 

Dryden  never  ceased  to  exercise  his  panegyrical 
vein  while  Charles  and  James  were  in  power.  But 
what  may  more  specifically  be  called  his  panegyri- 
cal period  extended  only  from  1660  to  1666.  The 
model  of  all  then,  including  Dryden,  was  Waller. 

He  best  can  turn,  enforce,  and  soften  things, 
To  praise  great  Conquerors  or  to  flatter  Kings, 

wrote  Rochester  in  his  Allusion  to  Horace;  and 
when  Dryden  inserted  his  English  names  in  Soame's 
Boileau  he  substituted  "Waller"  for  "Malherbe" 
in  the  line, 

Malherbe,  d'un  heros  peut  vanter  les  exploits. 
Waller  a  hero's  mighty  acts  extol. 

Waller  could  be  rapt  and  smooth  and  fatuous  in 
pleasant  proportions.  Dryden  added  other  quali- 
ties to  those  three.  His  official  praise  rings  with  a 
round  Roman  grandeur.  He  writes  as  if  he  lived  to 
praise,  not  praised  to  live.  His  lines  speak  con- 
tempt for  all  things  small — small  passions,  small 


I42         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

deeds,  small  wit.  He  is  warm  yet  decorous;  he 
is  effectual  because  of  his  great  confidence  and 
his  unremitting  eloquence.  And  his  resources  are 
infinite.  "He  appears  never  to  have  impoverished 
his  mint  of  flattery  by  his  expenses,  however 
lavish,"  says  Dr.  Johnson.  "He  had  all  the  forms 
of  excellence,  intellectual  and  moral,  combined 
in  his  mind,  with  endless  variation  .  .  .  and  brings 
praise  rather  as  a  tribute  than  a  gift,  more  de- 
lighted with  the  fertility  of  his  invention  than  mor- 
tified by  the  prostitution  of  his  judgment."  The 
Heroic  Stanzas  would  seem  to  have  been  written 
in  an  age  rather  remote  from  the  Astraa  Redux, 
although  only  a  year  separated  them.  The  differ- 
ence in  quality  is  the  difference  between  Marvell 
and  Waller,  or  better  yet,  the  difference  between 
Cromwell  and  Charles.  The  one  has  symmetry  and 
sinewy  calm,  the  other  slips  along  with  a  kind 
of  tepid  abandon.  The  Astraa  is  somewhat  more 
shapeless  and  profuse  than  Dryden  usually  is  in 
his  occasional  poetry;  he  has  not  yet  learned  his 
grouping.  Yet  the  peroration  is  well  gathered  up. 
The  poem  To  His  Sacred  Majesty,  a  Panegyric  on 
His  Coronation,  composed  about  a  year  after  the 
Astrtza,  is  an  improvement  with  respect  to  form. 
The  ideas  are  fewer,  but  each  in  its  turn  is  rounded 
out.  The  poem  climbs  in  a  series  of  flights,  with  in- 
tervals or  landings  between,  the  melody  mounting 
continuously  and  tending  to  be  cumulative  within 
the  flights.  The  poem  To  My  Lord  Chancellor, 
Presented  on  New  Year's  Day  (1662)  is  profuse  and 
tepid  again  except  for  one  nobly  concentrated  pas- 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  143 

sage  on  Charles  I  and  Clarendon.  The  Annus 
Mirabilis,  published  in  1667,  is  Dryden's  most  am- 
bitious official  compliment,  being  dedicated  "to  the 
Metropolis  of  Great  Britain,"  and  celebrating  both 
a  naval  war  and  a  great  fire.  The  prophecy  with 
which  it  ends  continues  the  central  motif  of  his  oc- 
casional work  in  that  it  is  collected  and  sustained. 
The  last  twelve  stanzas  pile  themselves  up  like  the 
Theban  stones  that  obeyed  Amphion's  lyre.  Dry- 
den's  panegyrical  period  now  came  to  a  close.  The 
Stuart  spell  was  broken,  Clarendon  fled  to  France, 
and  Marvell,  bitterly  loyal  to  the  best  interests  of 
England,  answered  the  vapid  flatteries  of  Waller 
and  his  train  with  exposures  which  made  such  men 
as  Pepys  weep  because  they  were  so  true.  Nearly 
twenty  years  passed  before  Dryden  performed 
again  on  his  official  pipes.  This  was  at  the  death  of 
Charles  II  when  he  wrote  his  Threnodia  Augustalis, 
a  "Funeral-Pindaric"  which  will  be  considered  more 
fully  elsewhere,  along  with  the  other  Pindarics.1 
The  poem  lies  loosely  about  for  want  of  any  sincere 
motive  that  can  knit  it  together.  The  best  con- 
structed passage  is  that  which  summons  up  Dry- 
den's  happiest  memories,  his  memories  of  peace: 

For  all  those  joys  thy  happy  restoration  brought, 
For  all  the  miracles  it  wrought, 

For  all  the  healing  balm  thy  mercy  poured 
Into  the  nation's  bleeding  wound, 
And  care  that  after  kept  it  sound, 

For  numerous  blessings  yearly  showered, 
And  property  with  plenty  crowned; 
1  See  Chapter  VI. 


144         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

For  freedom  still  maintained  alive, 
Freedom,  which  in  no  other  land  will  thrive, 
Freedom,  an  English  subject's  sole  prerogative, 
Without  whose  charms  even  peace  would  be 
But  a  dull  quiet  slavery: 

For  these,  and  more,  accept  our  pious  praise. 

Britannia  'Redivvoa  (1688),  on  the  birth  of  an  heir  to 
James  II,  is  a  dull  conclusion  to  the  least  distin- 
guished division  of  Dryden's  occasional  poetry. 
Like  the  Threnodia  it  lacks  that  sanguineness  which 
alone  had  justified  the  pieces  of  the  i66o's  and 
which  had  given  them  a  metrical  structure  interest- 
ing enough  to  study  now.  These  last  two  poems 
lack  what  it  is  fatal  for  Dryden  ever  to  lack,  drive. 

Dryden's  personal  epistles  and  complimentary 
addresses  bring  us  into  a  different  world.  Here  he 
is  at  home,  for  here  he  is  speaking  to  private  per- 
sons and  he  is  praising  books.  Three  kinds  of  poeti- 
cal epistles  gained  currency  during  the  seventeenth 
century.  The  Horatian  or  didactic  kind  began 
with  Daniel,  Drayton,  Donne,  and  Jonson,  and  cul- 
minated in  Pope.  The  Ovidian  or  "voluptuous" 
kind  got  a  start  in  volumes  like  Drayton's  Heroical 
Epistles  and  ran  on  to  Pope's  Eloisa  and  Abelard. 
The  third  kind,  the  complimentary,  was  more  pecul- 
iarly modern  and  local.  Rooted  in  Jonson,  it 
flowered  in  Dryden,  who  practiced  virtually  no 
other  sort.  Having  to  praise  both  men  and  books, 
he  was  never  in  want  of  excellent  models.  Jonson's 
epistles  to  the  owner  of  Penshurst  and  to  Elizabeth, 
Countess  of  Rutland,  Drayton's  to  Sandys  and 
Reynolds,  and  Waller's  to  Falkland  had  established 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  145 

a  distinguished  line  of  personal  compliment.  Wal- 
ler's verses  to  the  young  Viscount  as  he  left  for  war 
are  among  the  most  genuine  which  he  composed, 
one  indication  of  which  may  be  found  in  their  radi- 
cal enjambement,  as  in  this  passage: 

Ah,  noble  friend!  with  what  impatience  all 
That  know  thy  worth,  and  know  how  prodigal 
Of  thy  great  soul  thou  art  (longing  to  twist 
Bays  with  that  ivy  which  so  early  kissed 
Thy  youthful  temples),  with  what  horror  we 
Think  on  the  blind  events  of  war  and  thee! 
To  fate  exposing  that  all-knowing  breast 
Among  the  throng,  as  cheaply  as  the  rest; 
Where  oaks  and  brambles  (if  the  copse  be  burned) 
Confounded  lie,  to  the  same  ashes  turned. 

The  line  of  literary  compliment  which  descended  to 
Dryden  was  more  distinguished  still.  The  more 
firmly  literary  standards  became  fixed  the  readier 
were  men  to  praise  whatever  writing  they  liked,  and 
the  more  copious  too  became  critical  vocabularies. 
In  the  seventeenth  century  praise  of  books  might  be 
either  interested  or  disinterested.  It  might  be  mo- 
tivated by  actual  enthusiasm;  but  it  also  might  be 
motivated  by  personal  friendship,  by  hope  of  pat- 
ronage, by  party  feeling,  by  the  fee  of  a  printer,  or 
by  something  more  canny  yet,  the  expectation  that 
the  author  commended  would  reciprocate  when  next 
he  published  a  volume.  Authors,  at  the  instiga- 
tion of  publishers,  traded  compliments  as  freely  as 
boys  trade  marbles,  and  a  book  was  very  poor  which 
could  not  appear  prefaced  by  at  least  two  poetical 


146         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

puffs.  Whatever  the  motives,  the  practice  itself  pro- 
duced some  of  the  best  occasional  poetry  of  the  cen- 
tury; and  there  is  surely  something  logical  about 
the  predilection  of  a  critical  age  for  critical  verse. 
The  line,  to  resume,  came  down  through  such  poems 
as  Jonson's  to  Shakespeare  and  Sir  Henry  Savile, 
through  the  Jonsonus  Firbius  of  1638,  and  through 
Waller's  and  Cowley's  prefaces  to  Gondibert.  Run- 
ning into  Dryden  it  found  itself  in  the  control  of  a 
great  man  who  was  fond  of  bestowing  judgments 
and  who  was  possessed  of  unexampled  gifts  in  cas- 
ual criticism. 

Shortly  after  Dryden  entered  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  in  1650,  he  contributed  some  commen- 
datory verses  to  a  volume  of  "divine  Epigrams" 
published  by  his  friend  John  Hoddesdon.  The 
verses  have  a  Puritan  tinge  and  are  clumsy  in  their 
approbation.  Ten  years  later  he  opened  a  freer 
vein  of  compliment  in  the  piece  which  he  pre- 
fixed to  a  volume  of  Sir  Robert  Howard's  poems 
published  by  Henry  Herringman.  Probably  the 
applause  he  gave  to  Howard,  who  after  another 
three  years  was  to  become  his  brother-in-law,  was 
not  disinterested;  possibly  Herringman  engaged 
him  to  deliver  it.  At  any  rate,  he  wrote  the  lines 
with  real  relish,  achieving  in  a  slight  measure  the 
felicity,  the  fluency,  and  the  plenitude  of  praise 
which  marked  his  maturest  compliments.  He  also 
indulged  in  a  little  general  criticism,  incidentally  an- 
nouncing some  literary  ideals  of  his  own.  He  de- 
nounced conceits,  for  instance,  and  informed  How- 
ard that 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  147 

To  carry  weight,  and  run  so  lightly  too, 
Is  what  alone  your  Pegasus  can  do. 

So  firm  a  strength,  and  yet  withal  so  sweet, 
Did  never  but  in  Samson's  riddle  meet. 

In  1663  he  furnished  an  epistle  to  Dr.  Charleton 
for  insertion  in  his  treatise  on  Stonehenge,  which 
Herringman  was  publishing.  The  epistle  was  the 
first  of  Dryden's  that  set  out  to  discuss  a  literary  or 
philosophical  point.  It  is  virtually  an  essay  on  the 
conquest  of  Aristotelianism  by  experimental  science. 
The  address  to  Lady  Castlemaine  which  Dryden 
probably  made  soon  after  the  failure  of  his  first 
play  in  1663  shows  him  fairly  emancipated  from  the 
pedantry  and  miscellaneity  of  the  poems  which  pre- 
ceded it.  It  runs  straight  on,  swiftly  and  sweetly, 
quickened  into  life  by  the  sun  of  gallantry  which 
shines  upon  it. 

What  further  fear  of  danger  can  there  be? 
Beauty,  which  captives  all  things,  sets  me  free. 
Posterity  will  judge  by  my  success, 
I  had  the  Grecian  poet's  happiness, 
Who,  waiving  plots,  found  out  a  better  way; 
Some  god  descended,  and  preserved  the  play. 
When  first  the  triumphs  of  your  sex  were  sung 
By  those  old  poets,  Beauty  was  but  young, 
And  few  admired  the  native  red  and  white, 
Till  poets  dressed  them  up  to  charm  the  sight; 
So  Beauty  took  on  trust,  and  did  engage 
For  sums  of  praises  till  she  came  of  age. 
But  this  long-growing  debt  to  poetry 
You  justly,  Madam,  have  discharged  to  me, 


148         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

When  your  applause  and  favor  did  infuse 
New  life  to  my  condemned  and  dying  Muse. 

It  will  be  observed  that  no  accent  here  is  in  the 
smallest  degree  misplaced.  Another  epistle  did  not 
appear  until  1677,  when  Dryden  supplied  a  puff  for 
Lee,  to  go  in  front  of  his  printed  play,  The  Death  of 
Alexander  the  Great.  The  epistle  begins  with  an  in- 
teresting reference  to  the  practice  of  poetical  log- 
rolling which  already  has  been  described.  Lee  had 
puffed  Dryden's  State  of  Innocence,  Now,  begins 
Dryden, 

The  blast  of  common  censure  could  I  fear, 
Before  your  play  my  name  should  not  appear; 
For  'twill  be  thought,  and  with  some  color  too, 
I  pay  the  bribe  I  first  received  from  you; 
That  mutual  vouchers  for  our  fame  we  stand, 
And  play  the  game  into  each  other's  hand; 

but  he  proceeds  to  disclaim  any  other  than  the  pur- 
est motives  in  praising  Lee's  tragedy.  He  ends 
with  a  defense  of  Lee's  mad  way  of  writing  which  in 
seven  sharply  distinct  couplets  proves  that  Dryden 
has  mastered  Ovid's  art  of  "varying  the  same  sense 
an  hundred  ways  " : 

They  only  think  you  animate  your  theme 
With  too  much  fire,  who  are  themselves  all  phle'me. 
Prizes  would  be  for  lags  of  slowest  pace, 
Were  cripples  made  the  judges  of  the  race. 
Despise  those  drones,  who  praise  while  they  accuse 
The  two  much  vigour  of  your  youthful  muse. 
That  humble  style  which  they  their  virtue  make, 
Is  in  your  power;  you  need  but  stoop  and  take. 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  149 

Your  beauteous  images  must  be  allowed 
By  all,  but  some  vile  poets  of  the  crowd. 
But  how  should  any  signpost  dauber  know 
The  worth  of  Titian  or  of  Angelo? 
Hard  features  every  bungler  can  command; 
To  draw  true  beauty  shows  a  master's  hand. 

The  Earl  of  Roscommon  prefixed  a  complimentary 
poem  to  a  new  issue  of  the  Religio  Laid  in  1683. 
Dryden  came  back  the  next  year  with  some  lines 
applauding  Roscommon's  Essay  on  Translated  Verse. 
The  opening  furnishes  the  most  handsome  example 
in  all  Dryden  of  a  piece  of  versified  literary  history. 
The  progress  of  rhyme  from  ancient  Athens  to 
modern  London  is  represented  by  a  metrical  pro- 
gression which  must  have  been  the  despair  of  all 
living  poets: 

Whether  the  fruitful  Nile,  or  Tyrian  shore, 

The  seeds  of  arts  and  infant  science  bore, 

'Tis  sure  the  noble  plant  translated,  first 

Advanced  its  head  in  Grecian  gardens  nursed. 

The  Grecians  added  verse;  their  tuneful  tongue 

Made  nature  first  and  nature's  God  their  song. 

Nor  stopped  translation  here;  for  conquering  Rome 

With  Grecian  spoils  brought  Grecian  numbers  home, 

Enriched  by  those  Athenian  Muses  more 

Than  all  the  vanquished  world  could  yield  before; 

Till  barbarous  nations,  and  more  barbarous  times, 

Debased  the  majesty  of  verse  to  rhymes; 

Those  rude  at  first:  a  kind  of  hobbling  prose, 

That  limped  along,  and  tinkled  in  the  close. 

But  Italy,  reviving  from  the  trance 

Of  Vandal,  Goth,  and  monkish  ignorance, 

With  pauses,  cadence,  and  well-vowelled  words, 


ISO         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

And  all  the  graces  a  good  ear  affords, 

Made  rhyme  an  art,  and  Dante's  polished  page 

Restored  a  silver,  not  a  golden  age. 

Then  Petrarch  followed,  and  in  him  we  see 

What  rhyme  improved  in  all  its  height  can  be; 

At  best  a  pleasing  sound,  and  fair  barbarity. 

The  French  pursued  their  steps;  and  Britain,  last, 

In  manly  sweetness  all  the  rest  surpassed. 

The  wit  of  Greece,  the  gravity  of  Rome, 

Appear  exalted  in  the  British  loom; 

The  Muses'  empire  is  restored  again, 

In  Charles  his  reign,  and  by  Roscommon's  pen. 

Roscommon  here,  however  much  as  an  anticlimax 
he  may  come  to  a  modern  reader,  comes  at  least 
metrically  as  a  truly  stately  climax.  The  manner  if 
not  the  matter  of  this  sketch,  which  Dryden  en- 
joyed doing  if  he  ever  enjoyed  doing  anything  at  all, 
is  without  flaw.  The  next  epistle,  To  My  Friend, 
Mr.  J.  Northleigh,  Author  of  the  Parallel,  On  His 
Triumph  of  the  British  Monarchy  (1685)  is  short  and 
of  no  account.  A  year  or  two  after  this  Dryden 
wrote  for  the  Earl  of  Middleton  a  letter  in  octosyl- 
labic couplets  to  Sir  George  Etherege,  who  had  sent 
a  similar  piece  to  Middleton  from  Ratisbon.  It  was 
for  Dryden  a  tour  de  force.  He  was  not  fond  of  the 
octosyllabic  measure,  nor  was  he  temperamentally 
equipped  for  a  species  of  verse  which  seemed  to  fall 
somewhere  between  Butler  and  Prior.  His  epistle 
To  My  Ingenious  Friend,  Henry  Higden,  Esq.,  on  His 
Translation  of  the  Tenth  Satire  of  Juvenal  (1687) 
contained  like  the  poem  to  Roscommon  a  literary 
discussion,  this  time  on  the  subject  of  ancient  and 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  151 

modern  satire.  In  1692  he  consoled  Southerne  for 
the  failure  of  his  comedy  called  The  Wives'  Excuse 
with  an  epistle  that  closed  on  a  note  of  sage  and 
compendious  counsel.  The  famous  lines  to  Con- 
greve  on  his  Double-dealer  (1694),  and  those  to  Sir 
Godfrey  Kneller  of  the  same  year,  probably  in  ac- 
knowledgment of  a  portrait  of  Shakespeare  which 
Kneller  had  given  him,  represent  a  more  reflective 
stage  in  the  progress  of  Dryden's  epistolary  manner. 
They  do  not  charge  upon  their  subjects  with  the 
breathless  speed  of  the  early  addresses;  their  dis- 
course, which  in  one  case  is  upon  the  dramatic 
poetry  of  the  last  age  and  in  the  other  case  is  upon 
the  history  of  painting,  seems  packed  and  ripe.  The 
poem  to  Congreve  opens  on  a  theme  which  Dryden 
had  often  discussed  in  prose  and  which  he  once  had 
covered  in  an  epilogue,  the  superiority  of  Restora- 
tion wit  to  Jacobean  humor.  The  handling  here  is 
marked  by  rare  composure;  the  edifice  of  modern 
wit  rises  steadily  and  surely: 

Well  then,  the  promised  hour  is  come  at  last; 

The  present  age  of  wit  obscures  the  past: 

Strong  were  our  sires,  and  as  they  fought  they  writ, 

Conquering  with  force  of  arms  and  dint  of  wit; 

Theirs  was  the  giant  race  before  the  flood; 

And  thus,  when  Charles  returned,  our  empire  stood. 

Like  Janus  he  the  stubborn  soil  manured, 

With  rules  of  husbandry  the  rankness  cured; 

Tamed  us  to  manners,  when  the  stage  was  rude, 

And  boisterous  English  wit  with  art  indued. 

Our  age  was  cultivated  thus  at  length, 

But  what  we  gained  in  skill  we  lost  in  strength. 


i$2         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Our  builders  were  with  want  of  genius  curst; 
The  second  temple  was  not  like  the  first: 
Till  you,  the  best  Vitruvius,  come  at  length, 
Our  beauties  equal,  but  excel  our  strength. 
Firm  Doric  pillars  found  our  solid  base; 
The  fair  Corinthian  crowns  the  higher  space; 
Thus  all  below  is  strength,  and  all  above  is  grace. 

The  poem  ends  with  a  touching  last  will  and  testa- 
ment which  has  never  had  to  beg  for  praise,  but 
which  borders,  it  must  be  admitted,  upon  the  maud- 
lin. In  the  epistles  to  Granville  and  Motteux  in 
1698  Dryden  returned  more  or  less  to  the  glibness 
of  poems  like  the  Roscommon.  The  verses  to  Mot- 
teux the  Frenchman,  affixed  to  his  tragedy  called 
Beauty  in  Distress,  begin  with  a  reply  to  the  newly 
arisen  moral  censor  of  the  stage,  Jeremy  Collier,  and 
end  with  a  tribute  to  Motteux's  powers  which  af- 
fords another  example  of  Dryden's  facility  in  turn- 
ing over  an  idea  and  extracting  from  it  all  that 
could  be  extracted: 

Let  thy  own  Gauls  condemn  thee,  if  they  dare; 

Contented  to  be  thinly  regular. 

Born  there,  but  not  for  them,  our  fruitful  soil 

With  more  increase  rewards  thy  happy  toil. 

Their  tongue,  infeebled,  is  refined  so  much, 

That,  like  pure  gold,  it  bends  at  every  touch; 

Our  sturdy  Teuton  yet  will  art  obey, 

More  fit  for  manly  thought,  and  strengthened  with 

allay. 

But  whence  art  thou  inspired,  and  thou  alone, 
To  flourish  in  an  idiom  not  thy  own? 
It  moves  our  wonder,  that  a  foreign  guest 
Should  overmatch  the  most,  and  match  the  best. 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  153 

In  underpraising  thy  deserts,  I  wrong; 
Here,  find  the  first  deficience  of  our  tongue; 
Words,  once  my  stock,  are  wanting  to  commend 
So  great  a  poet  and  so  good  a  friend. 

The  last  two  epistles  of  all  appeared  with  consider- 
able pomp  in  Dryden's  last  volume,  the  Fables.  The 
Palatnon  and  Arcite  was  preceded  by  a  dedicatory 
poem  to  the  Duchess  of  Ormond  and  was  followed 
by  a  piece  upon  which  Dryden  expended  a  great 
deal  of  effort  and  of  which  he  was  justly  proud:  To 
My  Honored  Kinsman,  John  Driden,  of  Chesterton, 
in  the  County  of  Huntingdon,  Esquire.  The  lines  to 
"illustrious  Ormond,"  though  tawdry  in  a  few 
places,  are  suffused  with  a  fine  old  man's  gallantry; 
the  medieval  lustre  of  the  Fables  has  lent  them  a 
new  light.  Their  rapture  has  all  the  old  pulse,  but 
it  is  chastened  and  poised: 

O  daughter  of  the  rose,  whose  cheeks  unite 
The  differing  titles  of  the  red  and  white; 
Who  heaven's  alternate  beauty  well  display, 
The  blush  of  morning,  and  the  milky  way; 
Whose  face  is  paradise,  but  fenced  from  sin: 
For  God  in  either  eye  has  placed  a  cherubin. 
All  is  your  lord's  alone;  e'en  absent,  he 
Employs  the  care  of  chaste  Penelope. 
For  him  you  waste  in  tears  your  widowed  hours, 
For  him  your  curious  needle  paints  the  flowers; 
Such  works  of  old  imperial  dames  were  taught; 
Such,  for  Ascanius,  fair  Elisa  wrought. 

Only  the  most  frigid  reader  would  take  exception  to 
the  cherubim  which  God  has  stationed  in  the  Duch- 
ess' eyes.  The  poem  to  John  Driden  of  Chesterton 


154         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

is  the  most  Horatian  of  all  the  epistles.  It  is  a  eu- 
logy of  country  life  in  general  and  a  commendation 
of  the  kinsman's  own  rural  regimen  in  particular, 
with  digressions  more  or  less  sardonic  upon  mar- 
riage, medicine,  and  the  present  state  of  Europe. 
The  closing  paragraph  is  mathematically  final: 

O  true  descendant  of  a  patriot  line, 

Who,  while  thou  shar'st  their  luster,  lend'st  'em  thine, 

Vouchsafe  this  picture  of  thy  soul  to  see; 

'Tis  so  far  good  as  it  resembles  thee. 

The  beauties  to  the  original  I  owe; 

Which  when  I  miss,  my  own  defects  I  show; 

Nor  think  the  kindred  Muses  thy  disgrace; 

A  poet  is  not  born  in  every  race. 

Two  of  a  house  few  ages  can  afford; 

One  to  perform,  the  other  to  record. 

Praiseworthy  actions  are  by  thee  embraced; 

And  'tis  my  praise,  to  make  thy  praises  last. 

For  ev'n  when  death  dissolves  our  human  frame, 

The  soul  returns  to  heaven,  from  whence  it  came; 

Earth  keeps  the  body,  verse  preserves  the  fame. 

Dryden  paraded  a  distaste  for  epigrams  which 
was  consonant  with  the  contemporary  worship  of 
epic  poetry;  for  from  Bacon  to  Temple  the  heroic 
poem  crowded  out  of  the  general  estimation  all 
forms  that  were  less  pretentious.  "From  Homer  to 
the  Anthologia,  from  Virgil  to  Martial  and  Owen's 
Epigrams,  and  from  Spenser  to  Fleckno;  that  is, 
from  the  top  to  the  bottom  of  all  poetry,"  wrote 
Dryden  in  the  Discourse  of  Satire.  Yet  he  proved 
upon  a  few  occasions  to  have  an  epigrammatic  turn 
of  some  distinction.  His  epigram  on  Milton,  which 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  155 

appeared  in  Tonson's  1688  folio  edition  of  Paradise 
Lost,  is  neatly  put  together.  Its  shape  alone  has 
given  it  currency.  Few  have  observed  that  it  seems 
to  say  more  than  it  does.  "Loftiness  of  thought" 
and  "majesty"  seem  to  make  a  better  antithesis 
than  in  truth  they  do.  DeQuincey,  in  a  shrewd 
essay  on  this  poem,  which  he  calls  "the  very  finest 
epigram  in  the  English  language,"  marvels  at  the 
perfection  of  form  which  could  intrigue  a  whole 
century  of  readers  into  accepting  as  profound  a 
half  dozen  lines  which  really  say  nothing.  Dryden 
was  probably  drawn  to  the  Greek  Anthology  long 
before  1683,  when  he  closed  his  Life  of  Plutarch 
with  this  translation  of  the  epigram  by  Agathias: 

Cheronean  Plutarch,  to  thy  deathless  praise 
Does  martial  Rome  this  grateful  statue  raise; 
Because  both  Greece  and  she  thy  fame  have  shared, 
(Their  heroes  written,  and  their  lives  compared;) 
But  thou  thyself  couldst  never  write  thy  own; 
Their  lives  have  parallels,  but  thine  hast  none. 

Dryden's  eight  epitaphs  all  derive  a  certain  point- 
edness  and  sufficiency  from  the  shining  Anthology, 
although  in  the  main  their  author  tends  to  weave 
a  heavier  burial  cloth  than  that  which  was  woven 
by  Antipater,  Leonidas,  and  Simonides.  He  stiffens 
his  texture  by  means  of  conceits  and  antitheses, 
with  the  result  that  his  effect  is  likely  to  be  one  of 
rectangularity.  His  epitaphs  by  no  means  lack  that 
seventeenth-century  largeness  which  the  next  few  gen- 
erations could  not  muster,  and  the  absence  of  which 
in  contemporary  burial  verses  Dr.  Johnson  wrote  an 


156         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

essay  to  lament.  Dryden  shows  best  in  his  lines  on 
John  Graham  of  Claverhouse,  Viscount  Dundee, 
and  those  on  the  Marquis  of  Winchester.  Both 
poems  celebrate  the  lives  and  deaths  of  loyalists 
who  supported  lost  causes.  The  Marquis  of  Win- 
chester had  faught  for  Charles  I,  and  the  great 
Graham  of  Claverhouse  had  been  killed  at  Killie- 
crankie  in  1689.  The  epitaph  on  Winchester  begins 
with  four  couplets  which  draw  or  imply  four  dis- 
tinctions : 

He  who  in  impious  times  undaunted  stood, 
And  midst  rebellion  durst  be  just  and  good; 
Whose  arms  asserted,  and  whose  sufferings  more 
Confirmed  the  cause  for  which  he  fought  before, 
Rests  here,  rewarded  by  an  heavenly  prince, 
For  what  his  earthly  could  not  recompense. 
Pray,  reader,  that  such  times  no  more  appear; 
Or,  if  they  happen,  learn  true  honour  here. 

The  epitaph  on  Dundee  is  a  translation  from  a 
Latin  poem  by  Dr.  Archibald  Pitcairne.  It  follows 
its  original  closely  enough,  but  at  the  end  it  makes 
a  characteristic  departure  towards  a  greater  pro- 
fuseness  in  antithesis: 

O  last  and  best  of  Scots!  who  didst  maintain 
Thy  country's  freedom  from  a  foreign  reign; 
New  people  fill  the  land  now  thou  art  gone, 
New  gods  the  temples,  and  new  kings  the  throne. 
Scotland  and  thee  did  each  in  other  live; 
Thou  wouldst  not  her,  nor  could  she  thee  survive. 
Farewell,  who  living  didst  support  the  State, 
And  couldst  not  fall  but  with  thy  country's  fate. 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  157 

The  epitaphs  on  Lady  Whitmore,  on  "A  Fair  Maiden 
Lady  who  Died  at  Bath,"  on  "Young  Mr.  Rogers 
of  Gloucestershire,"  on  Mrs.  Margaret  Paston,  on 
Sir  Palmes  Fairborne  (in  Westminster  Abbey),  and 
on  Erasmus  Lawton  have  no  especial  significance. 

"We  have  been  all  born;  we  have  most  of  us  been 
married;  and  so  many  have  died  before  us,  that  our 
deaths  can  supply  but  few  materials  for  a  poet," 
wrote  Dr.  Johnson;  and  Goldsmith  thought  there 
was  nothing  new  to  be  said  upon  the  death  of  a 
friend  after  the  standard  classical  elegies.  Dry- 
den's  temper  seems  anything  but  elegiac  if  in  con- 
nection with  elegiac  we  think  of  Theocritus  Bion, 
Moschus,  Ovid,  Dante,  Petrarch,  Spenser,  and 
Donne.  The  more  mystical  of  the  Elizabethan  son- 
nets on  the  subject  of  death,  and  the  exquisite 
dirges  in  Shakespeare,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  and 
Webster  were  keyed  above,  or  at  least  keyed  in 
another  sphere  of  poetry  than  his.  He  is  not  a 
prober  among  mysteries;  he  is  not  exquisite.  He  is 
sober  and  symmetrical,  and  pays  his  tribute  to  the 
dead  with  plain,  manly  melodies.  His  elegies  and 
Donne's  are  poles  apart.  His  demand  to  be  read 
aloud,  there  being  no  reason  why  the  music  in  them 
should  be  subdued.  Donne's  take  effect  only  upon 
an  inner  ear  and  eye,  back  behind  the  curtain  of  the 
senses,  where  they  stage  their  dark,  fierce  little 
dramas  with  Love  and  Hate  and  Fear  and  Jealousy 
and  Death  in  the  leading  roles. 

Dryden's  first  elegy  happens  to  be  his  worst 
poem.  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say  that  when 
writing  the  Hastings  he  was  not  much  concerned 


158         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

either  about  the  young  departed  lord  or  about  the 
idea  of  death  in  general.  His  next  elegy  might  well 
be  called  his  best  poem.  If  one  is  not  pleased  by 
the  lines  To  the  Memory  of  Mr.  Oldham  one  will  not 
be  pleased  by  anything  in  Dryden;  they  are  his 
touchstone.  They  appeared  in  1684  among  several 
laments  which  prefaced  a  volume  of  Oldham's 
remains.  That  wrathful  young  satirist  had  died 
the  previous  year  at  the  age  of  thirty.  Dryden  had 
owed  him  no  trifling  literary  debts.  He  discharged 
them  posthumously  as  follows: 

Farewell,  too  little  and  too  lately  known, 

Whom  I  began  to  think  and  call  my  own: 

For  sure  our  souls  were  near  allied,  and  thine 

Cast  in  the  same  poetic  mold  with  mine. 

One  common  note  on  either  lyre  did  strike, 

And  knaves  and  fools  we  both  abhorred  alike. 

To  the  same  goal  did  both  our  studies  drive; 

The  last  set  out  the  soonest  did  arrive. 

Thus  Nisus  fell  upon  the  slippery  place, 

Whilst  his  young  friend  performed  and  won  the  race. 

O  early  ripe!  to  thy  abundant  store 

What  could  advancing  age  have  added  more? 

It  might  (what  nature  never  gives  the  young) 

Have  taught  the  numbers  of  thy  native  tongue. 

But  satire  needs  not  those,  and  wit  will  shine 

Through  the  harsh  cadence  of  a  rugged  line: 

A  noble  error,  and  but  seldom  made, 

When  poets  are  by  too  much  force  betrayed. 

Thy  generous  fruits,  tho'  gathered  ere  their  prime, 

Still  shewed  a  quickness;  and  maturing  time 

But  mellows  what  we  write  to  the  dull  sweets  of  rhyme. 

Once  more,  hail  and  farewell;  farewell,  thou  young, 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  159 

But  ah  too  short,  Marcellus  of  our  tongue; 

Thy  brows  with  ivy  and  with  laurels  bound; 

But  fate  and  gloomy  night  encompass  thee  around. 

The  poem  is  artificial,  perhaps  (like  Lycidas);  it 
is  full  of  echoes;  and  its  subject  is  literary.  But 
the  melody  is  round  and  sure;  every  couplet  sounds 
"like  a  great  bronze  ring  thrown  down  on  marble;" 
and  the  ideas  erect  themselves  without  commotion 
into  a  perfectly  proportioned  frame  of  farewell. 
There  is  not  an  original  word  in  the  poem.  It  is  a 
classical  mosaic,  pieces  of  which  Dryden  had  had  by 
him  for  a  long  time.  It  is  precisely  as  a  mosaic,  as  a 
composition,  that  it  is  triumphant.  The  passion- 
ate farewell,  the  ave  atque  vale,  had  been  a  favorite 
motif  in  Greek  and  Latin  elegy.  Dryden  begins 
with  a  line  that  savors  of  Juliet's  bewildered  out- 
burst when  she  discovers  Romeo's  full  identity  at 
the  ball: 

My  only  love,  sprung  from  my  only  hate! 
Too  early  seen  unknown,  and  known  too  late! 

Virgil  had  been  fond  of  celebrating  two  souls  that 
were  "near  allied";  and  Persius  in  the  fifth  Satire 
had  drawn  a  parallel  between  himself  and  his  tutor 
Cornutus  of  which  Dryden's  third  and  fourth  lines 
are  reminiscent.  The  story  of  Nisus  seems  never  to 
have  been  out  of  Dryden's  mind.  As  early  as  The 
Indian  Emperor  he  had  made  Guyomar  declare  to 
Odmar,  his  rival  for  Alibech: 

It  seems  my  soul  then  moved  the  quicker  pace; 
Yours  first  set  out,  mine  reached  her  in  the  race. 


160         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

And  very  recently  he  had  been  translating  the  epi- 
sode of  Nisus  and  Euryalus  from  Virgil  for  the  sec- 
ond Miscellany,  which  was  to  appear  in  a  few 
months.  He  had  written  then  for  Virgil, 

One  was  their  care,  and  their  delight  was  one; 
One  common  hazard  in  the  war  they  shared. 

And  he  had  spoken  for  Ascanius  to  Euryalus  thus: 

But  thou,  whose  years  are  more  to  mine  allied.  .  .  . 
One  faith,  one  fame,  one  fate,  shall  both  attend. 

"Young  Marcellus"  was  the  dead  nephew  of  Au- 
gustus whom  Virgil  had  mourned  in  the  sixth  ^Eneid. 
Dryden  had  inserted  a  similar  lament  for  the  Duke 
of  Ormond's  (Barzillai's)  son  in  Absalom  and  Achit- 
ophel  (11.  830-855).  The  ivy,  the  laurel,  the  fate, 
and  the  gloomy  night  encompassing  around  were 
venerable  adornments  which  could  scarcely  be 
avoided.  Additional  parallels  can  be  of  no  con- 
sequence; these  in  themselves  are  enough  to  show 
how  Dryden  was  able  to  pour  his  memories  out 
upon  an  occasion.  Nothing  except  his  genius  can 
explain  the  precision  with  which  he  grouped  those 
memories  in  this  case,  or  the  harmony  with  which 
his  passion  suffused  them.  He  never  succeeded  so 
well  in  elegy  again.  The  ode  in  memory  of  Anne 
Killigrew  is  more  interesting  as  an  ode  than  as  an 
elegy,  and  is  reserved  for  consideration  as  such.1 
Eleonora  (1692),  composed  for  a  fat  fee  in  honor  of  the 
late  Countess  of  Abingdon,  whom  Dryden  had  never 
seen,  was  declared  by  Sir  Walter  Scott,  the  gentlest 

1  See  Chapter  VI. 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  161 

critic  whom  the  poet  has  had,  to  be  "totally  defi- 
cient in  interest."  It  is  a  catalogue  of  female 
Christian  virtues,  virtues  which  Dryden  was  not 
much  moved  by.  It  suffers  from  a  threadbare 
piety  everywhere  except  at  the  end,  in  what  Dry- 
den  calls  the  "Epiphonema,  or  close  of  the  poem." 
Here,  as  usual,  he  quickens  his  pulse  and  gathers 
his  powers.  He  is  probably  inspired  in  this  case  by 
Ben  Jonson,  who  began  an  epigram  to  the  Earl  of 
Pembroke  with  the  lines, 

I  do  but  name  thee,  Pembroke,  and  I  find 
It  is  an  epigram  on  all  mankind. 

Dryden  writes: 

Let  this  suffice:  nor  thou,  great  saint,  refuse 
This  humble  tribute  of  no  vulgar  muse; 
Who,  not  by  cares,  or  wants,  or  age  depressed, 
Stems  a  wild  deluge  with  a  dauntless  breast; 
And  dares  to  sing  thy  praises  in  a  clime 
Where  vice  triumphs,  and  virtue  is  a  crime; 
Where  ev'n  to  draw  the  picture  of  thy  mind 
Is  satire  on  the  most  of  humankind; 
Take  it,  while  yet  'tis  praise;  before  my  rage, 
Unsafely  just,  break  loose  on  this  bad  age; 
So  bad,  that  thou  thyself  hadst  no  defense 
From  vice,  but  barely  by  departing  hence. 

Be  what,  and  where  thou  art;  to  wish  thy  place 
Were,  in  the  best,  presumption  more  than  grace. 
Thy  relics  (such  thy  works  of  mercy  are) 
Have,  in  this  poem,  been  my  holy  care; 
As  earth  thy  body  keeps,  thy  soul  the  sky, 
So  shall  this  verse  preserve  thy  memory; 
For  thou  shalt  make  it  live,  because  it  sings  of  thee. 


162         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

An  elegy  of  uncertain  date  On  the  Death  of  a  Very 
Young  Gentleman  is  even  less  interesting  than 
Eleonora.  The  account  may  close  with  Dryden's 
only  attempt  at  a  pastoral  elegy,  a  poem  On  the 
Death  of  Amyntas,  also  undated.  It  is  a  dialogue 
between  Damon  and  Menalcas.  It  opens  with  a 
fine  rush  of  melody: 

'Twas  on  a  joyless  and  a  gloomy  morn, 
Wet  was  the  grass,  and  hung  with  pearls  the  thorn; 
When  Damon,  who  designed  to  pass  the  day 
With  hounds  and  horns,  and  chase  the  flying  prey, 
Rose  early  from  his  bed;  but  soon  he  found 
The  welkin  pitched  with  sullen  clouds  around, 
An  eastern  wind,  and  dew  upon  the  ground. 
Thus  while  he  stood,  and  sighing  did  survey 
The  fields,  and  cursed  th'  ill  omens  of  the  day, 
He  saw  Menalcas  come  with  heavy  pace; 
Wet  were  his  eyes,  and  cheerless  was  his  face; 
He  wrung  his  hands,  distracted  with  his  care, 
And  sent  his  voice  before  him  from  afar. 

But  it  soon  ceases  to  give  out  sound,  proceeding 
through  some  of  the  flattest  moralizing  in  Dryden 
and  ending  with  a  very  inferior  conceit. 

As  a  class,  the  prologues  and  epilogues  of  Dryden 
are  the  richest  and  best  body  of  his  occasional  verse. 
There  is  no  surer  way  to  become  convinced  of  his 
superbly  off-hand  genius  than  to  read  the  ninety- 
five  pieces  which  he  is  known  to  have  composed  for 
delivery  from  the  front  of  the  Restoration  stage. 
They  give,  more  adequately  than  any  other  division 
of  his  work,  a  notion  of  his  various  powers:  his 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  163 

speed,  his  precision,  his  weight,  his  melody,  his  tact. 
He  seems  to  have  been  braced  in  writing  them  by 
his  consciousness  that  they  would  be  heard  by  acute 
and  critical  ears  in  actual  playhouses;  for  he  has 
purged  himself  of  conceits,  bombast,  and  mannered 
elegance.  They  are  his  most  speaking  poems;  they 
have  the  warmth  of  flesh  and  blood.  He  has  writ- 
ten some  of  them  as  much  for  fun  as  for  money,  and 
consciously  or  unconsciously  he  has  revealed  him- 
self in  them  all  to  an  important  extent.  They  are 
a  running  commentary  on  forty  years  of  his  life,  as 
well  as  a  living  mirror  in  which  the  tiny  theatrical 
world  of  Charles  and  James  is  shrewdly  reflected. 

Dryden  is  the  master  of  the  prologue  and  epilogue 
in  English.  His  peculiar  authority  was  felt  in  his 
own  day  before  even  a  dozen  of  his  supple,  terse 
addresses  had  been  delivered  by  members  of  the 
King's  Company;  and  eventually  he  was  acknowl- 
edged to  be  without  any  rival  in  the  art  of  pre- 
senting new  dramas  to  old  audiences.  It  came  to  be 
understood  that  a  prologue  by  Mr.  Dryden  might 
mean  the  making  of  a  green  playwright  or  the  saving 
of  an  unprepossessing  play.  Spectators  relished  his 
confidences  and  his  innuendoes;  often  there  was  more 
real  meat  in  his  forty  lines  of  introduction  than  the 
whole  ensuing  tragedy  or  comedy  could  furnish 
forth.  The  secret  of  his  success  lay  in  the  intimacy 
yet  dignity  of  his  harangue.  He  was  both  easy  and 
important;  he  was  fluent,  but  he  was  also  condensed. 
There  was  something  peculiarly  satisfying  in  his 
form;  he  rounded  off  his  little  speeches  as  though 
they  were  clay  and  his  brain  was  a  potter's  wheel. 


164         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

The  final  impression  was  one  of  many  riches  cas- 
ually summoned  but  faultlessly  disposed. 

There  is  nothing  exactly  like  these  pieces  of  Dry- 
den's  in  any  literature.  The  classical  drama  ap- 
proximated them  nowhere  except  in  the  parabeses 
of  Aristophanes,  when  the  Chorus  came  forward 
for  the  author  and  delivered  torrents  of  audacious 
remarks  to  the  audience.  Greek  tragedies  might 
be  prefaced  with  prologues,  but  they  were  more  or 
less  integral  in  the  action,  and  were  not  personal. 
Plautus  and  Terence  used  prologues  mainly  to 
explain  the  events  which  were  to  follow,  though 
Terence  in  his  conducted  mild  literary  quarrels 
around  charges  of  plagiarism;  their  epilogues  were 
only  perfunctory  bids  for  applause.  The  French 
drama  never  developed  either  form  extensively; 
the  English  drama  began  at  an  early  stage  to  culti- 
vate both,  scarcely,  however,  in  the  direction  of 
Dryden.  Marlowe  introduced  his  Tamburlaine 
with  high  astounding  terms.  Shakespeare  pre- 
served a  chaste  anonymity  in  the  playhouse;  his 
Prologue  in  Henry  V  is  strictly  necessary;  only  in 
the  epilogue  to  As  You  Like  It  and  in  the  prologue 
and  epilogue  to  Henry  VIII  does  he  take  his  audi- 
ence into  his  confidence,  and  even  there  he  has  his 
reserves.  Ben  Jonson  opened  a  vein  which  was 
followed  along  by  none  of  his  contemporaries  or 
immediate  successors.  He  was  the  first  English 
playwright  to  harangue  the  pit;  he  was  the  father  of 
the  militant  prologue.  He  first  showed  how  lit- 
erary criticism  could  be  run  serially,  preceding 
plays;  his  prologue  to  Every  Man  in  his  Humour 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  165 

sounds  like  Dryden.  Dekker  and  Heywood  were 
more  modest;  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  did  much  to 
discourage  altogether  the  bold,  direct  address  to  the 
audience.  The  Restoration  brought  in  a  new  mode. 
Theater-goers  were  now  more  sophisticated  and  be- 
longed more  to  a  single  class;  being  somewhat  fa- 
miliar as  well  with  the  fashionable  literary  canons, 
they  liked  an  occasional  dash  of  criticism  from  a 
poet  not  too  pedantic  to  be  interesting  or  even 
saucy.  As  time  went  on,  more  intimate  relations 
came  to  be  established  among  dramatists,  players, 
and  spectators  within  the  four  walls  of  the  theaters; 
the  fortunes  of  both  authors  and  actors  became 
of  real  concern  to  a  now  well-seasoned  public;  a 
greater  body  of  common  knowledge  took  shape;  it 
became  possible  for  audiences  to  be  addressed  on 
certain  fairly  specialized  subjects.  Prologues  and 
epilogues  were  now  poems  that  could  stand  alone; 
often  it  made  very  little  difference  at  what  play  or 
in  what  order  they  were  spoken.  "Now,  gentle- 
men," says  Bayes  in  the  Rehearsal,  "I  would  fain 
ask  your  opinion  of  one  thing.  I  have  made  a  Pro- 
logue and  an  Epilogue,  which  may  both  serve  for 
either;  that  is,  the  prologue  for  the  epilogue,  or  the 
epilogue  for  the  prologue;  (do  you  mark?)  nay,  they 
may  both  serve  too,  'egad  for  any  other  play  as  well 
as  this."  Bayes  was  right;  prologues  and  epilogues 
had  become  social  events.  Etherege  helped  to  set 
the  tone  of  Restoration  performances  in  this  kind, 
with  his  pungent  reflections  on  the  tastes  of  the  pit 
and  his  cavalier  trick  of  speaking  of  his  Muse  as  his 
mistress;  but  Etherege  wrote  little  at  the  most. 


i66         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Outside  of  Dryden  the  best  Restoration  performers 
were  Lee,  Mrs.  Behn,  Otway,  and  Congreve,  with 
their  varying  degrees  of  sprightliness  and  author- 
ity. Dryden  could  stand  against  them  all;  they 
could  please,  but  he  could  take  by  storm.  The 
Restoration  saw  the  prologue  and  the  epilogue  at 
their  height.  The  revolutions  in  taste  which  intro- 
duced the  new  age  of  Steele  and  Gibber  and  Lillo 
brought  more  heterogeneous  crowds  to  the  theaters, 
and  it  seemed  less  important  to  hear  what  the  au- 
thor, whoever  he  might  be,  had  to  say  each  day. 
Yet  so  old  a  habit  could  not  be  broken  at  once,  and 
many  excellent  sets  of  verses  continued  to  precede 
and  follow  plays,  particularly  farces,  throughout  the 
eighteenth  century.  Pope,  Thomson,  Goldsmith, 
and  Johnson  wrote  respectable  pieces;  but  the  mas- 
ters in  this  century  were  Fielding  and  Garrick. 
Fielding  had  all  of  Dryden's  energy  and  wickedness, 
if  not  his  richness  and  his  form.  He  pretended  to 
write  prologues  under  protest, 

As  something  must  be  spoke,  no  matter  what; 
No  friends  are  now  by  prologues  lost  or  got.  .  .  . 
I  wish  with  all  my  heart,  the  stage  and  town 
Would  both  agree  to  cry  all  prologues  down, 
That  we,  no  more  obliged  to  say  or  sing, 
Might  drop  this  useless,  necessary  thing. 

Garrick  has  more  of  the  useless  things  to  his  credit 
than  has  any  other  Englishman;  he  is  always  dex- 
terous, but  he  does  not  carry  any  considerable 
weight. 

It  is  likely  that  Dryden  began  to  write  prologues 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  167 

and  epilogues  perfunctorily,  without  any  notion  of 
their  possibilities;  and  to  the  end  he  maintained  a 
certain  nonchalance  with  reference  to  them  that  he 
could  not  easily  muster  for  other  forms.  He  felt 
free  in  them,  for  instance,  to  indulge  in  feminine 
rhymes,  which  elsewhere  he  renounced  as  too  famil- 
iar. Yet  he  came  early  to  see  that  some  of  these 
poems  were  almost  his  best  writing.  He  arranged 
for  the  first  Miscellany  in  1684  to  include  eighteen 
of  the  riper  specimens;  and  his  relish  for  the  exer- 
cise in  general  steadily  increased.  He  was  under  no 
obligations  in  this  form;  he  could  damn  the  small 
critics  of  the  pit  and  he  could  pour  no  end  of  ridicule 
upon  the  general  taste.  Yet  he  could  exercise  his 
gifts  of  compliment  too  if  he  liked.  Tom  Brown 
affected  to  believe  that  Dryden's  flattery  of  Oxford 
was  very  gross,  and  Dryden  himself  wrote  to  Roch- 
ester remarking,  "how  easy  'tis  to  pass  any  thing 
upon  an  university,  and  how  gross  flattery  the 
learned  will  endure."  He  took  increasing  pains  to 
render  himself  effective,  and  to  make  it  clear  to  all 
that  he  excelled.  He  compared  the  prologue  in  his 
hands  to  a  church-bell  in  the  hands  of  the  sexton: 

Prologues,  like  bells  to  churches,  toll  you  in 
With  chiming  verse,  till  the  dull  plays  begin; 
With  this  sad  difference,  tho',  of  pit  and  pew, 
You  damn  the  poet,  but  the  priest  damns  you; 1 

or  to  a  military  assault  conducted  on  a  large  and 
fierce  scale.  He  compared  the  epilogue  to  a  bene- 
diction : 

1  Prologue  to  Tht  Assignation. 


i68         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

As  country  vicars,  when  the  sermon's  done, 

Run  huddling  to  the  benediction; 

Well  knowing,  tho*  the  better  sort  may  stay, 

The  vulgar  rout  will  run  unblest  away; 

So  we,  when  once  our  play  is  done,  make  haste 

With  a  short  epilogue  to  close  your  taste.  l 

He  selected  the  most  intelligent  and  vivacious 
players  as  his  spokesmen,  and  adapted  his  lines  to 
their  known  dispositions:  Nell  Gwynn  could  do  the 
surprising,  saucy  things;  Mrs.  Bracegirdle,  Mrs. 
Mountfort,  and  Mrs.  Marshall  could  deliver  more 
scurrilous  and  scandalous  messages;  Mr.  Betterton 
could  be  infinitely  grave,  as  when  he  impersonated 
the  ghost  of  Shakespeare;  and  Mr.  Hart  could  be 
choice  and  elegant,  for  the  prologues  at  Oxford. 
Nell  Gwynn  was  twice  called  upon  to  succeed  by 
sensational  means:  in  the  prologue  to  the  first  part 
of  the  Conquest  of  Granada,  which  she  recited 
wearing  a  hat  as  broad  as  a  coach-wheel,  and  in  the 
epilogue  to  Tyrannic  Love,  which  she  spoke  only 
after  resisting  the  efforts  of  the  bearers  to  convey 
her  dead  body  off  the  stage: 

(To  the  Bearer):    Hold,  are  you  mad,  you  damned  con- 
founded dog, 

I  am  to  rise,  and  speak  the  epilogue. 
(To  the  Audience}:    I  come,  kind  gentlemen,  strange  news 

to  tell  ye, 
I  am  the  ghost  of  poor  departed 

Nelly. 

Dryden  came  also  more  and  more  to  pack  his  pieces 
with  criticism  and  allusion.  His  serried  dialectic 

1  Epilogue  to  Sir  Martin  Mar-All. 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  169 

flattered  the  audience  which  was  expected  to  follow 
it;  though  the  following  was  made  somewhat  easier 
by  the  practice  of  circulating  folio  copies  of  the  pro- 
logue and  epilogue  before  the  play  began,  so  that  the 
hearers  were  likely  to  be  familiar  with  the  lines  when 
it  came  time  for  them  to  be  recited.  If  Dryden  wrote 
his  first  prologues  and  epilogues  perfunctorily,  it  is 
plain  that  he  wrote  his  later  ones  both  with  instinc- 
tive delight  and  with  due  attention  to  the  precautions 
necessary  for  insuring  their  success. 

For  his  measure  he  has  confined  himself  almost 
wholly  to  the  heroic  couplet;  though  the  prologues 
to  his  Wild  Gallant  and  to  Joseph  Harris'  Mistakes 
are  in  part  prose  dialogues;  and  the  prologue  to  the 
Maiden  Queen,  the  epilogue  to  the  Tempest,  the  pro- 
logue to  Limberham,  and  the  prologue  to  the  King 
and  Queen  (1682)  are  in  triplets,  the  effect  of  which 
is  often  slily  jovial: 

Old  men  shall  have  good  old  plays  to  delight  'em; 
And  you,  fair  ladies  and  gallants,  that  slight  'em, 
We'll  treat  with  good  new  plays;  if  our  new  wits  can 
write  'em. 

He  is  fond  of  leading  off  with  a  simile  or  metaphor  and 
elaborating  it  throughout  the  length  of  the  piece;  as 
witness  the  prologue  to  the  Wild  Gallant,  Revived, 
where  the  author's  dramatic  muse  is  compared  to  a 
raw  young  squire  who  has  come  up  to  London 
bent  on  making  an  impression  swiftly.  He  falls  at 
times,  for  the  sake  of  emphasis,  into  aphorism,  as 
here  in  the  prologue  to  All  for  Love: 


170         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Errors,  like  straws,  upon  the  surface  flow; 

He  who  would  search  for  pearls  must  dive  below; 

or  here  in  the  epilogue  to  Lee's  Mithridates: 

Love  is  no  more  a  violent'desire; 
'Tis  a  mere  metaphor,  a  painted  fire.  .  .  . 
Let  honour  and  preferment  go  for  gold, 
But  glorious  beauty  is  not  to  be  sold. 

Only  in  the  satires  is  his  pen  as  pointed;  and  indeed 
it  was  largely  from  the  sixty-five  prologues  and 
epilogues  which  he  had  written  by  1681  that  the 
author  of  Absalom  and  Achitophel  had  learned  to 
wield  irresistible  satiric  cadences.  Scorn  for  French 
farces  and  for  Whig  reformers  had  been  sharpening 
Dryden's  claws  during  the  late  i67o's.  He  had 
learned  the  accents  of  mockery  in  such  lines  as  these 
from  the  prologue  to  Carlell's  Arviragus: 

If  all  these  ills  could  not  undo  us  quite, 
A  brisk  French  troop  is  grown  your  dear  delight, 
Who  with  broad  bloody  bills  call  you  each  day 
To  laugh  and  break  your  buttons  at  their  play; 
Or  see  some  serious  piece,  which  we  presume 
Is  fallen  from  some  incomparable  plume. 

He  had  taken  his  turn  at  the  Popish  Plot  in  the  pro- 
logues to  Lee's  Casar  Borgia  and  Tate's  Loyal  Gen- 
eral. Always  there  had  been  his  audience  at  which 
he  could  rail. 

The  most  compendious  method  is  to  rail; 
Which  you  so  like,  you  think  yourselves  ill  used 
When  in  smart  prologues  you  are  not  abused. 
A  civil  prologue  is  approved  by  no  man; 
You  hate  it  as  you  do  a  civil  woman, 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  171 

he  had  declared  as  early  as  1667,  in  the  epilogue  to 
the  Maiden  Queen.  The  fun  he  was  to  have  with  Og 
and  Doeg  was  very  much  like  the  fun  he  had  had 
with  the  yawning  faces  in  the  stalls  at  Casar  Borgia: 

You  sleep  o'er  wit,  and  by  my  troth  you  may; 
Most  of  your  talents  lie  another  way. 
You  love  to  hear  of  some  prodigious  tale, 
The  bell  that  tolled  alone,  or  Irish  whale. 

Roughly  speaking,  there  are  nine  subjects  treated 
in  Dryden's  prologues  and  epilogues,  or  nine  reasons 
for  their  being.  These  will  not  serve  as  the  basis  for 
an  exact  classification,  because  certain  pieces  turn  on 
more  than  one  point;  but  an  enumeration  of  those  pro- 
logues and  epilogues  which  play  notably  on  each  of 
the  nine  strings  may  stand  as  a  guide  through  this 
most  miscellaneous  department  of  Dryden's  poetry. 

First,  there  are  those  which  celebrate  theatrical 
occasions,  such  as  the  "Prologue  Spoken  on  the  First 
Day  of  the  King's  House  Acting  after  the  Fire,"  the 
"Prologue  for  the  Women  when  they  Acted  at  the 
Old  Theater  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,"  the  prologue 
and  epilogue  to  "The  Maiden  Queen,  when  Acted 
by  the  Women  Only,"  and  the  prologues  and  epilogue 
"Spoken  at  the  Opening  of  the  New  House"  in  1674. 

Second,  there  are  those  which  compliment  dis- 
tinguished spectators  or  flatter  special  audiences, 
like  the  prologues  and  epilogues  spoken  at  Oxford, 
the  prologue  and  epilogue  for  The  Unhappy  Favourite 
"Spoken  to  the  King  and  the  Queen  at  their  Coming 
to  the  House,"  the  "Prologue  to  his  Royal  Highness 
[the  Duke  of  York],  Upon  His  First  Appearance  at 


172         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

the  Duke's  Theater  Since  His  Return  from  Scotland," 
the  "Prologue  to  the  Duchess  [of  York]  on  Her  Re- 
turn from  Scotland,"  and  the  prologue  and  epilogue 
"To  the  King  and  Queen  at  the  Opening  of  their 
Theater  upon  the  Union  of  the  Two  Companies  in 
1682."  Of  all  these  the  prologues  spoken  at  Oxford 
are  deservedly  the  best  known,  containing  as  they 
do  some  of  Dryden's  most  genial  verse.  One,  which 
is  seldom  quoted,  shows  him  in  a  particularly  merry 
humor.  It  is  the  prologue  spoken  at  the  University 
during  the  Duke  of  York's  residence  in  Scotland  in 
1681.  Certain  members  of  the  company,  it  seems, 
had  followed  the  Duke  up  to  Holyrood  House: 

Our  brethern  are  from  Thames  to  Tweed  departed, 

And  of  our  sisters  all  the  kinder-hearted 

To  Edenborough  gone,  or  coached,  or  carted. 

With  bonny  bluecap  there  they  act  all  night 

For  Scotch  half-crown,  in  English  threepence  hight. 

One  nymph,  to  whom  fat  Sir  John  Falstaff 's  lean, 

There  with  her  single  person  fills  the  scene; 

Another,  with  long  use  and  age  decayed, 

Dived  here  old  woman,  and  rose  there  a  maid. 

Our  trusty  doorkeepers  of  former  time 

There  strut  and  swagger  in  heroic  rhyme. 

Tack  but  a  copper  lace  to  drugget  suit, 

And  there's  a  hero  made  without  dispute; 

And  that  which  was  a  capon's  tail  before 

Becomes  a  plume  for  Indian  Emperor. 

Mrs.  Marshall  took  this  pretty  farewell  of  the  learned 
in  1674: 

Such  ancient  hospitality  there  rests 

In  yours,  as  dwelt  in  the  first  Grecian  breasts, 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  173 

Whose  kindness  was  religion  to  their  guests. 
Such  modesty  did  to  our  sex  appear, 
As  had  there  been  no  laws  we  need  not  fear, 
Since  each  of  you  was  our  protector  here. 
Converse  so  chaste,  and  so  strict  virtue  shown, 
As  might  Apollo  with  the  Muses  own. 
Till  our  return,  we  must  despair  to  find 
Judges  so  just,  so  knowing,  and  so  kind. 

Third,  there  are  those  which  deal  in  literary  crit- 
icism, such  as  the  first  prologue  to  the  Maiden  Queen, 
on  the  French  and  English  rules,  the  epilogue  to  The 
Wild  Gallant,  Revived,  on  the  difficulties  of  writing 
comedy,  the  prologue  to  the  Tempest,  on  Shakespeare, 
the  prologue  to  Albumazar,  on  plagiarism,  the  pro- 
logue to  Tyrannic  Love,  on  poetic  license,  the  epilogue 
to  the  second  part  of  the  Conquest  of  Granada,  on 
Elizabethan  and  modern  wit,  the  famous  prologue 
to  Aureng-Zebe,  on  rhyming  plays,  the  prologue  and 
epilogue  to  (Edipus,  on  anglicizing  Greek  tragedy, 
the  prologue  to  Troilus  and  Cressida,  on  Shakespeare 
again,  and  the  prologue  to  Amphitryon,  on  the  sub- 
ject of  contemporary  satire.  The  epilogue  to  the 
second  part  of  the  Conquest  of  Granada  is  as  a  whole 
the  most  perfect  of  these  poems.  The  contrast  be- 
tween Jonson's  humor  and  King  Charles's  wit  is 
developed  with  economy  and  precision  and  yet  with 
a  staggering  copiousness.  The  subject  is  turned 
every  possible  way;  the  seventeen  couplets  lay  on 
seventeen  different  pieces  of  fuel  to  brighten  the  fire. 
Dryden  exhausts  the  subject  without  exhausting  the 
reader.  He  varies  one  sense  seventeen  ways,  but 
each  of  the  ways  is  fresh  and  contributive. 


174         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Fourth,  there  are  those  which  introduce  young 
playwrights,  such  as  the  prologue  to  Circe,  introduc- 
ing Charles  Davenant,  the  epilogue  to  Tamerlane, 
commending  Charles  Saunders,  the  prologue  and 
epilogue  to  the  Loyal  Brother,  introducing  Thomas 
Southerne,  and  the  epilogue  to  The  Husband  his 
Own  Cuckold,  introducing  Dryden's  own  son  John. 

Fifth,  there  are  those  which  berate  the  audience 
for  its  low  taste,  for  its  preferring  French  farce  to 
English  comedy,  and  for  the  fools  and  critics  that 
largely  compose  it.  These  railing  prologues  and  epi- 
logues are  legion.  The  general  taste  is  lamented  the 
most  reproachfully  in  the  prologue  to  the  Rival 
Ladies,  the  epilogue  to  Aureng-Zebe,  the  prologue  to 
Limberham,  the  prologue  to  Ccesar  Borgia,  the  pro- 
logue to  the  Loyal  General,  the  prologue  to  King 
Arthur,  and  the  prologue  to  Cleomenes.  The  weak- 
ness for  French  literary  goods  is  hit  the  best  blows 
in  the  epilogue  to  An  Evenings  Love,  the  prologue  to 
Arviragus,  the  epilogue  to  the  Man  of  Mode,  the  pro- 
logue to  the  Spanish  Friar,  and  the  prologue  to 
Albion  and  Albanius.  Critics  and  fools  are  both 
abhorred  alike  in  the  prologue  to  the  Rival  Ladies,  the 
epilogue  to  the  Indian  Emperor,  the  second  prologue 
to  the  Maiden  Queen,  the  prologue  to  the  second  part 
of  the  Conquest  of  Granada,  the  prologue  to  All  for 
Love,  and  the  epilogue  to  the  Man  of  Mode. 

Sixth,  there  are  those  which  play  with  contem- 
porary manners  in  the  town  and  in  the  theaters;  like 
the  prologues  written  for  the  women  only,  the  pro- 
logue to  Marriage  a  la  Mode,  which  makes  out  a  piti- 
ful case  for  "poor  pensive  punk"  now  that  the  braves 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  175 

are  all  gone  off  to  war,  the  prologue  to  The  True 
Widow,  on  certain  familiar  vices,  the  prologue  to  the 
Spanish  Friar,  the  prologue  to  the  Princess  of  Cleves, 
the  epilogue  to  the  King  and  Queen,  and  the  prologue 
to  Southerne's  Disappointment. 

Seventh,  there  are  those  which  seem  to  have  been 
calculated  to  please  through  sheer  brutal  innuendo. 
These  are  unquotable  but  superb;  they  are  incontest- 
ably  expert  at  the  game  they  play.  They  are  the 
exercises  of  an  adroit  and  tireless  imagination  which 
hesitated  at  nothing.  The  prologues  and  epilogues 
for  the  women  only,  the  prologue  to  The  Wild  Gal- 
lant, Revived,  the  prologue  to  An  Evening's  Love,  the 
epilogue  to  the  Assignation,  the  epilogue  to  Limber- 
ham,  the  prologue  and  epilogue  to  the  Princess  of 
Cleves,  the  prologue  to  the  Disappointment,  the  epi- 
logue to  Constantine  the  Great,  the  epilogue  to  Don 
Sebastian,  the  epilogue  to  Amphitryon,  the  epilogue 
to  Cleomenes,  the  epilogue  to  Bancroft's  Henry  II, 
and  in  fact  almost  every  prologue  or  epilogue  there- 
after, must  be  dispatched  to  this  category. 

Eighth,  there  are  the  political  prologues  and  epi- 
logues. "A  Lenten  Prologue"  of  1683,  probably  by 
Shadwell,  pointed  the  way  to  the  new  type: 

Our  prologue  wit  grows  flat;  the  nap's  worn  off, 
And  howsoe'er  we  turn  and  trim  the  stuff, 
The  gloss  is  gone  that  looked  at  first  so  gaudy; 
'Tis  now  no  jest  to  hear  young  girls  talk  bawdy, 
But  plots  and  parties  give  new  matters  birth, 
And  state  distractions  serve  you  here  for  mirth. 

Shadwell,  if  Shadwell  it  was,  referred  to  Dryden's 


176         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

X 

and  Lee's  Duke  of  Guise  (1682).  A  prologue  at  Ox- 
ford in  1680  had  compared  critics  in  the  theater  to 
Whigs  in  the  state.  During  the  ten  years  that  fol- 
lowed, almost  every  prologue  or  epilogue  of  Dryden's 
bore  more  or  less  directly  upon  the  constitutional 
conflict  of  that  decade;  the  series  closing  in  1690  with 
the  prologue  to  Fletcher's  Prophetess,  which  contained 
covert  sneers  at  the  Revolution  and  presented  King 
William's  Irish  campaign  in  a  ludicrous  light. 

Ninth,  there  are  those  which  are  personal  or  con- 
troversial, and  take  the  audience  into  the  poet's  con- 
fidence. The  epilogue  to  Marriage  a  la  Mode  is  an 
apology  for  a  chaste  play.  The  epilogue  to  Fletcher's 
Pilgrim  (1700)  is  a  none  too  sober  moral  recantation 
following  the  attacks  of  Collier  and  others  upon  the 
manners  of  the  stage.  The  prologue  to  Don  Sebastian, 
Dryden's  last  play  after  the  Revolution,  asks  that 
civil  grudges  be  forgotten,  and  begs  forgiveness  for 
supposed  political  sins.  The  prologue  to  Love  Tri- 
umphant, Dryden's  last  play  of  all,  is  a  will  and 
testament  bequeathing  his  various  dramatic  gifts 
to  the  critics  and  the  beaux.  It  is  a  sly,  ripe  piece  of 
raillery,  a  portion  of  which  should  be  fitting  as  a  tail- 
piece to  a  chapter  which  has  aimed  to  convey  a  sense 
of  Dryden's  occasional  riches.  The  lines  were  spoken 
by  Mr.  Betterton : 

So  now,  this  poet,  who  forsakes  the  stage, 

Intends  to  gratify  the  present  age. 

One  warrant  shall  be  signed  for  every  man. 

All  shall  be  wits  that  will,  and  beaux  that  can.  .  .  . 

He  dies,  at  least  to  us,  and  to  the  stage, 

And  what  he  has  he  leaves  this  noble  age. 


THE  OCCASIONAL  POET  177 

He  leaves  you  first,  all  plays  of  his  inditing, 

The  whole  estate  which  he  has  got  by  writing. 

The  beaux  may  think  this  nothing  but  vain  praise; 

They'll  find  it  something,  the  testator  says; 

For  half  their  love  is  made  from  scraps  of  plays. 

To  his  worst  foes  he  leaves  his  honesty, 

That  they  may  thrive  upon't  as  much  as  he. 

He  leaves  his  manners  to  the  roaring  boys, 

Who  come  in  drunk,  and  fill  the  house  with  noise. 

He  leaves  to  the  dire  critics  of  his  wit 

His  silence  and  contempt  of  all  they  writ. 

To  Shakespeare's  critic,  he  bequeaths  the  curse, 

To  find  his  faults,  and  yet  himself  make  worse.  .  .  . 

Last,  for  the  fair,  he  wishes  you  may  be, 

From  your  dull  critics,  the  lampooners,  free. 

Tho'  he  pretends  no  legacy  to  leave  you, 

An  old  man  may  at  least  good  wishes  give  you. 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE 

"Is  it  not  great  pity  to  see  a  man,  in  the  flower  of 
his  romantic  conceptions,  in  the  full  vigour  of  his 
studies  on  love  and  honour,  to  fall  into  such  a  dis- 
traction, as  to  walk  through  the  thorns  and  briers 
of  controversy?"  So  Tom  Brown,  in  his  Reflections 
on  the  Hind  and  Panther,  pretended  to  lament  Dry- 
den's  defection  from  the  theaters  in  the  i68o's  and 
his  alliance  with  the  new  powers  of  politics  and 
religion.  The  change,  as  is  well  known,  meant  relief 
to  Dryden  from  modes  of  expression  which  were  not 
altogether  adapted  to  his  disposition  and  by  his 
subjection  to  which  over  a  period  of  approximately 
twenty  years  he  had  been  somewhat  bored.  There 
were  a  number  of  reasons,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  for 
the  new  departure.  Not  all  of  the  plays  had  been 
successful.  "I  gad,"  Bayes  had  said  in  the  Rehearsal, 
"the  Town  has  used  me  as  scurvily,  as  the  Players 
have  done.  .  .  .  Since  they  will  not  admit  of  my 
Plays,  they  shall  know  what  a  Satyrist  I  am.  And 
so  farewell  to  this  stage  forever,  I  gad."  In  the 
dedication  of  Aureng-Zebe  to  Lord  Mulgrave  in  1676, 
Dryden  had  confessed  to  his  patron  that  he  was 
weary  of  play-writing  and  had  asked  that  the  King 
be  sounded  on  the  question  of  an  epic,  for  which 
leisure  and  hence  a  pension  would  be  required.  In 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  179 

1690,  in  the  preface  to  Don  Sebastian,  he  recalled 
further  reasons  why  he  had  deserted  the  stage  ten 
years  before.  "Having  been  longer  acquainted  with 
the  stage  than  any  poet  now  living,  and  having  ob- 
served how  difficult  it  was  to  please;  that  the  humours 
of  comedy  were  almost  spent;  that  love  and  honour 
(the  mistaken  topics  of  tragedy)  were  quite  worn 
out;  that  the  theaters  could  not  support  their  charges; 
that  the  audience  forsook  them;  that  young  men 
without  learning  set  up  for  judges,  and  that  they 
talked  loudest  who  understood  the  least;  all  these 
discouragements  had  not  only  weaned  me  from  the 
stage,  but  had  also  given  me  a  loathing  of  it."  Still 
another  set  of  circumstances  must  have  been  im- 
pressing themselves  upon  him  during  the  half  dozen 
years  that  preceded  Absalom  and  Achitophel.  The 
Court,  which  had  served  as  a  setting  and  a  justifi- 
cation for  the  heroic  drama  and  which  in  its  self- 
sufficiency  had  tended  to  cramp  the  imagination 
and  restrict  the  field  of  literary  enterprise,  had  begun 
to  lose  somewhat  in  significance;  politics  had  grown 
more  complicated;  the  formation  of  parties  was  im- 
minent; and  journalism  promised  new  rewards  to 
men  who  could  comment  with  effect  upon  topics 
absorbing  the  general  attention.  The  Popish  Plot 
injected  new  fevers  into  the  general  blood;  violent 
ups  and  downs  in  public  fortunes  came  again,  as 
during  the  Civil  War,  to  seem  matters  of  course; 
dramatic  reversals  of  position  like  those  of  Titus 
Gates,  who  was  in  glory  in  1679,  was  flogged  almost 
to  death  in  1685,  but  was  set  up  with  a  pension  in 
1689,  were  now  quite  regularly  to  be  looked  for.  The 


i8o         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

climax  of  Dryden's  career  was  coincident  with  these 
new  crises.  The  poems  on  public  affairs  which  he 
wrote  during  the  six  years  between  Absalom  and 
Achitophel  in  1681  and  the  Hind  and  the  Panther  in 
1687  furnished  him  as  a  class  with  his  best  opportuni- 
ties and  must  always,  as  a  class,  deserve  to  be  the 
best  known  of  his  work. 

Throughout  the  closing  years  of  his  main  dramatic 
period  Dryden  had  been  wont  to  express  a  strong 
dislike  for  those  "abominable  scribblers,"  the  pam- 
phleteers. It  was  not  only  that  the  pamphleteers 
of  the  country  party  in  particular  offended  his  sense 
of  political  propriety;  pamphleteering  in  general 
offended  his  sense  of  the  dignity  of  literature  and 
poetry.  Meanwhile  he  was  developing  a  public 
voice  of  his  own.  The  prologues  and  epilogues,  the 
controversial  prefaces,  and  both  the  rhymed  tragedies 
and  the  prose  comedies  in  so  far  as  they  involved 
exercise  in  repartee,  had  trained  his  powers  of  attack, 
had  taught  him  the  damage  that  might  be  done  with 
cool,  insulting  analysis  and  loaded  innuendo.  All  the 
while,  as  it  has  been  seen,  he  had  been  discovering 
important  new  resources  of  the  heroic  couplet,  and 
he  had  been  suppling  his  medium  so  that  a  great 
variety  of  materials  could  be  run  through  it.  The 
new  materials  were  to  make  severe  demands  upon 
his  verse,  but  he  came  equipped  to  meet  any. 
He  came  with  unexampled  stores  of  energy  and  with 
an  incorruptible  literary  conscience  that  precluded 
his  writing  anything  trivial  or  feeble.  "If  a  poem 
have  genius,"  he  remarked  in  the  preface  to  Absalom 
and  Achitophel  i  "it  will  force  its  own  reception  in  the 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  181 

world."  Dr.  Johnson's  father,  the  bookseller,  has 
attested  the  reception  which  Absalom  and  Achitophel 
forced  in  its  world;  genius  paid  in  that  one  case  at 
least.  Dryden  came  also  with  an  abiding  sense  of 
his  superiority;  he  arrived  on  a  high  level  from  which 
he  looked  down  not  only  upon  other  controversi- 
alists but  even  upon  the  events  which  he  was  to 
treat;  he  maintained  that  elevation  and  that  com- 
posure which  are  never  found  except  in  the  company 
of  an  artistic  confidence.  He  came  finally  with  his 
most  valuable  gift  of  all,  his  gift  of  shaping  thoughts 
and  composing  full,  round  pictures  of  men  and 
principles. 

He  came,  it  must  be  admitted  at  once,  without  con- 
spicuous principles  of  his  own  concerning  Church  or 
State.  Bishop  Burnet  denied  him  religious  convic- 
tions of  any  complexion  whatsoever,  and  his  name  has 
always  been  synonymous  with  "  turn-coat "  in  politics. 
First  of  all,  as  he  himself  said,  he  was  "naturally 
inclined  to  scepticism;"  it  is  not  to  be  believed  that 
he  was  converted  to  Catholicism  by  the  works  of 
Bossuet  at  the  age  of  fifty-four  in  the  same  sense  that 
Gibbon  was  converted  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  though 
Gibbon  thought  he  was  following  in  Dry  den's  tracks; 
nor  is  it  to  be  believed  that  he  ever  possessed 
a  set  of  nicely  distinguished,  carefully  pondered 
political  ideas.  In  the  second  place,  he  was  not  as 
much  convinced  that  principles  were  necessary  as  it 
is  generally  assumed  he  should  have  been;  he  was 
not  a  prophet  or  a  hero,  but  a  party  writer,  writing 
at  a  time  when  a  comparatively  neutral  field  of 
public  opinion  had  not  as  yet  been  cleared.  In  the 


1 82    THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

third  place,  such  principles  as  he  did  possess  were 
not  so  much  principles  as  prejudices,  all  of  which 
can  be  summed  up  by  saying  that  he  hated  and 
feared  disturbance  of  any  kind.  By  temperament 
a  firm  believer  in  order,  he  learned  from  Hobbes  to 
set  a  peculiar  value  on  "peaceable,  social  and  com- 
fortable living"  even  at  the  expense  of  justice  and 
the  general  health.  He  was  absorbed  in  the  status 
quo,  and  his  instinct  was  to  strike  desperately  at 
whatever  new  thing  threatened  a  dissipation  of 
authority. 

All  other  errors  but  disturb  a  state, 
But  innovation  is  the  blow  of  fate, 

he  wrote  in  Absalom  and  Achitophel.  He  had  all  of 
Hobbes'  distrust  of  the  multitude,  "that  numerous 
piece  of  monstrosity,"  as  Sir  Thomas  Browne  put  it, 
"which,  taken  asunder,  seem  men,  and  reasonable 
creatures  of  God;  but,  confused  together,  make  but 
one  great  beast."  He  declined  to  believe  that  the 
crowd  knew  what  it  wanted. 

The  tampering  world  is  subject  to  this  curse, 
To  physic  their  disease  into  a  worse. 

What  it  needed,  he  said,  was  "common  quiet,"  and 
common  quiet  could  only  be  imposed  by  a  single 
authority,  the  King.  He  had  no  superstitions  about 
the  divine  right,  but  he  had  no  faith  in  democracy. 
"Both  my  nature,  as  I  am  an  Englishman,  and  my 
reason,  as  I  am  a  man,  have  bred  in  me  a  loathing  to 
that  specious  name  of  a  Republick,"  he  told  the 
Earl  of  Danby  in  the  dedication  of  All  for  Love  three 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  183 

years  before  the  appearance  of  Absalom  and  Achito- 
phel:  "that  mock-appearance  of  a  liberty,  where  all 
who  have  not  part  in  the  government  are  slaves; 
and  slaves  they  are  of  a  viler  note  than  such  as  are 
subjects  to  an  absolute  dominion."  Where  power 
already  was,  there  were  his  sympathies.  Any  priest 
or  any  politician  who  questioned  that  power  or  of- 
fered to  repair  the  machinery  of  state  was  an  enemy 
of  mankind.  Dryden's  dread  of  change  was  neither 
reasonable  nor  noble,  but  it  was  consistent. 

Given  a  consistent  outlook,  it  was  not  required 
that  a  seventeenth  century  journalist  in  verse  be  a 
subtle  scholar.  When  journalism  becomes  subtle, 
it  must  go  over  into  prose.  It  being  desirable  in 
that  day  to  work  in  plain  blacks  and  whites  rather 
than  in  shades  of  gray,  a  type  of  expression  such  as 
Dryden  was  master  of  could  not  fail  to  be  effectual. 
Both  in  satire  and  in  ratiocination  he  wrote  with  a 
pulse  that  could  be  distinctly  felt.  His  political 
poems  and  his  religious  poems  beat  against  whatever 
consciousness  there  was  with  a  regular  and  powerful 
rhythm. 

Testimony  is  varied  as  to  Dryden's  satirical  tem- 
per. "Posterity  is  absolutely  mistaken  as  to  that 
great  man,"  ran  an  octogenarian 's  letter  in  the  Gentle- 
man's Magazine  in  1745;  "tho'  forced  to  be  a  satirist, 
he  was  the  mildest  creature  breathing.  .  .  .  He  was 
in  company  the  modestest  man  that  ever  conversed." 
It  is  recorded  that  latterly  at  least  he  was  short,  fat, 
florid,  had  "a  down  look,"  and  could  be  "easily 
discountenanced."  He  spoke  in  the  preface  to  the 
second  Miscellany  of  his  "natural  diffidence,"  and 


184         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

in  the  dedication  of  Troilus  and  Cressida  he  said, 
no  doubt  facetiously  in  part,  "I  never  could  shake 
off  the  rustic  bashfulness  which  hangs  upon  my  na- 
ture." It  was  notorious  that  he  could  not  read  his 
own  lines  aloud  without  hesitation  and  embarrass- 
ment. "He  had  something  in  his  nature,"  asserted 
Congreve,  "that  abhorred  intrusion  into  any  society 
whatsoever  .  .  .  and,  consequently,  his  character 
might  become  liable  both  to  misapprehensions  and 
misrepresentations."  George  Granville,  Lord  Lans- 
downe,  defended  him  thus  against  Bishop  Burnet's 
charge  that  he  had  been  "a  monster  of  immodesty": 
"modesty  in  too  great  a  degree  was  his  failing.  He 
hurt  his  fortune  by  it;  he  was  sensible  of  it;  he  com- 
plained of  it,  and  never  could  overcome  it."  All 
this  does  not  consort  with  the  notion  one  is  likely  to 
have  entertained  that  Dryden  was  personally  formi- 
dable, even  overbearing.  The  scourge  of  Shaftes- 
bury,  Buckingham,  Shadwell,  and  Settle  by  rights 
should  have  been  towering  and  scowling;  the  man  who 
is  said  to  have  sent  a  messenger  to  Tonson  with  a 
scathing  triplet  and  with  the  words,  "Tell  the  dog 
that  he  who  wrote  these  lines  can  write  more,"  should 
have  been  fearful  in  some  physical  aspect  or  other. 
Yet  the  only  remark  which  has  come  down  from  his 
time  which  even  indirectly  connects  satire  with  him 
personally  is  a  remark  which  Aubrey  inserted  in 
his  life  of  Milton:  "He  pronounced  the  letter  R 
(littera  canina)  very  hard — a  certaine  signe  of  a 
Satyricall  Witt — from  Jo.  Drey  den."  Dry  den's 
power  seems  to  have  issued  solely  from  his  words. 
He  had  mastered  the  satirical  kind  of  expression  as 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  185 

he  had  mastered  other  kinds  before,  and  what  he 
was  like  behind  his  mask  of  phrases  remained  of 
no  consequence.  He  bitterly  hated  few  persons, 
perhaps  none,  but  he  was  capable  of  a  sublime  con- 
tempt, and  it  was  contempt  that  he  knew  perfectly 
how  to  put  into  meter.  At  Shadwell  he  never  did 
anything  but  laugh.  He  was  never  stupefied  with 
rage  as  the  average  man  is  stupefied  in  the  face  of 
idiocy  or  infamy.  He  never  forgot  that  he  would 
be  effective  only  as  he  remembered  to  be  an  artist. 
"There  is  a  pride  of  doing  more  than  is  expected 
from  us,"  he  said,  "and  more  than  others  would 
have  done."  "There's  a  sweetness  in  good  verse," 
ran  the  preface  to  Absalom  and  Achitophel,  "which 
tickles  even  while  it  hurts,  and  no  man  can  be 
heartily  angry  with  him  who  pleases  him  against 
his  will." 

Tradition  distinguishes  between  satirists  who  are 
mild  and  well-mannered,  like  Varro,  Horace,  and 
Cowper,  and  those  who  are  angry  and  rough,  like  Lu- 
cilius,  Juvenal,  Persius,  Hall,  Marston,  and  Church- 
ill. Dryden  belongs  with  Juvenal,  but  not  in  the 
sense  that  he  is  angry  or  rough.  His  animus  is  con- 
trolled, and  his  satirical  surface  is  as  smooth  as  worn 
stone.  What  he  has  in  common  with  Juvenal  is  a 
huge  thoroughness,  a  quality  which  he  himself 
attributes  to  the  Roman  in  the  Discourse  of  Satire: 
"He  fully  satisfies  my  expectation,  he  treats  his 
subject  home  ...  he  drives  his  reader  along  with 
him.  .  .  .  When  he  gives  over,  it  is  a  sign  the  sub- 
ject is  exhausted."  This  largeness  and  this  complete- 
ness have  seldom  come  together  in  a  satirical  poet. 


1 86         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Juvenal  alone  among  the  Romans  had  the  combi- 
nation in  a  notable  degree.  Medieval  satire  lacked 
distinction  if  it  had  thoroughness.  The  so-called 
classical  satirists  at  the  end  of  Elizabeth's  reign  in 
England  were  angry  and  rough,  but  they  were  nei- 
ther exalted  nor  exhaustive.  Cleveland,  Denham, 
and  Marvell,  the  first  English  party  satirists,  were 
at  best  ragged  and  hasty,  however  earnest.  Butler 
cannot  be  compared  with  anyone,  least  of  all  with 
Dryden,  whose  laughter  never  went  off  into  chuckles. 
John  Oldham  gave  the  most  promise  before  Dryden 
of  becoming  the  English  Juvenal.  With  "satire  in 
his  very  eye,"  as  a  contemporary  put  it,  he  went  to 
Boileau  for  form  and  appropriated  current  passions 
for  material.  His  Satires  Upon  the  Jesuits,  written 
in  1679,  first  in  England  treated  specific  contem- 
porary affairs  with  dramatic  grandeur  and  swell- 
ing dignity.  The  Elizabethans  had  not  been  spe- 
cific; Cleveland,  Denham,  and  Marvell  had  not  been 
grand.  Oldham,  who  still  seems  fresh,  must  have 
struck  his  first  readers  with  remarkable  force.  His 
solid,  angry  lines  gave  warning  of  an  original  and 
impetuous  spirit.  Dryden,  as  the  poem  which  he 
wrote  in  1684  certifies,  was  vividly  impressed  by  his 
junior.  It  was  from  the  Satires  Upon  the  Jesuits, 
particularly  from  Loyola's  speech  in  the  third  part, 
as  well  as  from  Paradise  Lost  that  he  drew  the  state- 
liness  of  Absalom  and  Achitophel.  He  added  humor 
to  Oldham 's  preponderating  gloom,  he  modified 
Oldham's  abruptness  to  directness,  and  he  avoided 
the  infelicities  of  rhyme  and  meter  with  which  Old- 
ham  had  thought  to  approximate  the  fervor  of  Ju- 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  187 

venal.  But  the  great  original  force  of  the  man  Dry- 
den  did  not  pretend  or  wish  to  modulate.  Oldham  on 
his  own  side  had  learned  much  from  the  elder  poet, 
as  numerous  passages  in  his  works  discover.  It  is  a 
question  whether  a  couplet  that  appears  in  Oldham's 
Letter  from  the  Country  to  a  Friend  in  Town  (1678), 

That,  like  a  powerful  cordial,  did  infuse 
New  life  into  his  speechless,  gaping  Muse, 

can  be  a  paraphrase  of  the  conclusion  of  Dryden's 
epistle  to  Lady  Castlemaine;  1  Dryden's  poem  seems 
never  to  have  been  printed  before  the  third  Miscellany 
in  1693,  and  it  is  possible  that  in  preparing  it  for 
that  volume  Dryden  borrowed  the  couplet  from 
Oldham  to  reinforce  his  ending.  But  there  are  six- 
teen lines  near  the  end  of  the  Letter  which  cer- 
tainly "transverse,"  as  the  saying  then  was,  the 
opening  of  the  dedication  of  the  Rival  Ladies,  pub- 
lished fourteen  years  before : 2 

'Tis  endless,  Sir,  to  tell  the  many  ways 

Wherein  my  poor  deluded  self  I  please: 

How,  when  the  Fancy  lab 'ring  for  a  birth, 

With  unfelt  throes  brings  its  rude  issue  forth: 

How  after,  when  imperfect  shapeless  thought 

Is  by  the  judgment  into  fashion  wrought; 

When  at  first  search  I  traverse  o'er  my  mind, 

None  but  a  dark  and  empty  void  I  find; 

Some  little  hints  at  length,  like  sparks,  break  thence, 

And  glimm'ring  thoughts  just  dawning  into  sense; 

Confused  awhile  the  mixt  ideas  lie, 

With  naught  of  mark  to  be  discovered  by, 

1  See  page  147. 
1  See  page  135. 


1 88         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Like  colours  undistinguished  in  the  night, 
Till  the  dusk  Images,  moved  to  the  light, 
Teach  the  discerning  faculty  to  choose 
Which  it  had  best  adopt,  and  which  refuse. 

What  might  be  called  the  satirical  accent  in  Dry- 
den  is  noticeable  from  the  beginning.  The  Juvena- 
lian  portions  of  the  Hastings  have  already  been  re- 
marked. Shadwell,  in  his  Medal  of  John  Bayes, 
with  what  foundation  is  unknown,  declares: 

At  Cambridge  first  your  scurrilous  vein  began, 
When  saucily  you  traduced  a  nobleman. 

The  Astrcza  Redux  is  not  without  strains  of  sarcasm, 
as  here: 

Thus  banished  David  spent  abroad  his  time, 
When  to  be  God's  anointed  was  his  crime. 

The  Annus  Mirabilis  comes  perilously  near  to  dis- 
respect of  Charles  when  it  says  of  him  that  he 

Outweeps  an  hermit,  and  out-prays  a  saint. 

And  so  on  through  the  prologues  and  epilogues, 
Dryden  all  the  while  adding  steadily  to  his  stock 
of  satirical  devices.  PJe  learns  that  Alexandrines 
are  of  little  value  in  a  form  where  the  motion  must 
be  swift  aftd  regular;  his  major  satires  have  seven' 
altogether.  He  learns  that  the  medial  pause  is  the 
most  telling  in  the  long  run;  he  perfects  himself  in 
antithesis  and  balance.  He  discovers  that  allitera- 
tion gives  emphasis  and  helps  to  set  the  meter  rocK- 
ing.  He  sees  that  pyrrhic  feet  give  speed  and  assist 
in  making  the  transitions  natural.  He  finds  that 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  189 

the  stressing  of  penultimates  stamps  out  lines  which 
are  unforgettable: 

He  curses  God,  but  God  before  cursed  him. 

The  midwife  laid  her  hand  on  his  thick  skull 
With  this  prophetic  blessing:  Be  thou  dull. 

I  will  not  rake  the  dung-hill  of  thy  crimes, 

For  who  would  read  thy  life  that  reads  thy  rhymes? 

To  talk  like  Do-eg  and  to  write  like  thee. 

And  gradually  he  secures  full  possession  of  the  secret 
which  is  to  aid  him  in  becoming  the  most  famous  of 
English  satirists,  the  secret  of  the  contemptuous 


"Characters"  are  as  old  as  literature,  as  old  as 
human  life  itself.  The  summing  up  of  traits  was 
an  instinct  before  it  was  an  art.  With  Theophras- 
tus  it  was  a  moral  exercise.  As  a  branch  of  the 
satiric  art  it  was  elaborated  first  by  Horace  and 
Juvenal,  who  by  this  and  other  means  gave  tones 
to  satire  which  at  all  its  high  points  it  has  never 
lacked.  The  two  Romans  went  about  in  different 
ways,  of  course,  to  sketch  personalities.  Horace 
worked  with  a  smile,  delighting  most  in  scraps  of 
action  and  dialogue  which  revealed  the  fools  he  knew 
in  Rome.  The  bore  who  joined  him  along  the  Via 
Sacra  (Sat.  I,  9)  and  Tigellius  the  Sardinian  singer 
(Sat.  I,  3)  were  laughably  real.  Tigellius  was  like 
Dryden's  Zimri: 

This  man  never  did  anything  of  a  piece.  One  while  he 
would  run  as  if  he  were  flying  from  an  enemy;  at  other 
times  he  would  walk  with  as  solemn  a  pace  as  he  who 


190         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

carries  a  sacrifice  to  Juno.  Sometimes  he  had  two  hun- 
dred servants,  sometimes  only  ten.  Now  he  would  talk 
of  kings  and  tetrarchs,  and  everything  great;  now  he 
would  say,  I  desire  no  more  than  a  three-footed  table,  a 
little  clean  salt,  and  a  gown  (I  do  not  care  how  coarse), 
to  defend  me  from  the  cold.  Had  you  given  this  fine 
manager  a  thousand  sesterces,  who  was  as  well  satisfied 
with  a  few,  in  five  days  his  pockets  would  be  empty.  He 
would  frequently  sit  up  all  night,  to  the  very  morning,  and 
would  snore  in  bed  all  day.  There  never  was  anything  so 
inconsistent  with  itself. 

Dryden  knew  this  Tigellius;  and  once  he  took  oc- 
casion to  praise  the  Rupilius  and  the  Persius  who 
are  presented  by  Horace  in  a  somewhat  different 
manner  in  the  seventh  satire  of  the  first  book.  They 
too  are  shown  in  action,  but  Rupilius  is  introduced 
by  a  series  of  epithets  which  anticipates  Juvenal. 

Durus  homo,  atque  odio  qui  posset  vincere  Regem; 
Confidens,  tumidusque;  adeo  sermonis  amari, 
Sisennos,  Barros  ut  equis  pnecurreret  albis. 

Juvenal  invented  the  chain  of  scornful  epithets  and 
was  partial  to  it  in  his  satiric  practice.  If  he  re- 
sorted to  action  at  all  he  made  it  swift  and  savage, 
like  that  of  Messalina  going  to  the  stews.  His  fourth 
satire  is  a  gallery  of  portraits,  in  the  manner  of 
Absalom  and  Achitophel;  the  various  councillors  who 
come  to  advise  the  emperor  what  he  shall  do  with 
his  monstrous  turbot  are  seized  by  a  firm  hand  and 
dressed  in  sinister  new  robes.  The  Greek  parasite 
described  in  the  third  satire  is  even  more  of  a  Zimri 
than  Tigellius  was : 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  191 

Ingenium  velox,  audacia  perdita,  sermo 
Promptus  et  Isaeo  torrentior.    Ede  quid  ilium 
Esse  putes.    Quemvis  hominem  secum  attulit  ad  nos: 
Grammaticus  rhetor  geometres  pictor  aliptes 
Augur  schoenobates  medicus  magus,  omnia  novit 
Graeculus  esuriens. 


Dryden  has  translated  the  passage  thus: 

Quick-witted,  brazen-faced,  with  fluent  tongues, 

Patient  of  labours,  and  dissembling  wrongs. 

Riddle  me  this,  and  guess  him  if  you  can, 

Who  bears  a  nation  in  a  single  man? 

A  cook,  a  conjurer,  a  rhetorician, 

A  painter,  pedant,  a  geometrician, 

A  dancer  on  the  ropes,  and  a  physician. 

All  things  the  hungry  Greek  exactly  knows. 

The  Middle  Ages  and  the  Renaissance  were  rich  in 
"characters"  of  types  and  individuals.  Clerics  and 
laymen,  allegorists  and  chroniclers  were  busy  at  por- 
traiture. No  one  has  disposed  of  individuals  in  more 
cursory,  stinging  phrases  than  those  which  Dante 
used;  no  one  has  drawn  types  better  than  Chaucer. 
Barclay's  Ship  of  Fools  was  full  to  sinking.  Awde- 
ley's  Fraternity  of  Vagabonds  (1565)  was  a  populous 
gallery  of  English  rogues.  In  Elizabeth's  reign  men 
like  Greene  and  Nash  brought  forward  other  rascals 
to  the  light;  and  formal  satirists  like  Hall  and  Donne 
gave  a  general  flaying  to  the  London  coxcombs. 
Donne  was  a  fourth-dimensional  Horace;  the  fop  who 
adorns  his  first  satire  deserves  to  be  one  of  the  most 
famous  of  all  literary  effigies. 


192         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

The  seventeenth  century,  in  England  and  else- 
where, saw  an  extraordinary  development  in  the  art 
of  portraying  personages  both  generalized  and  real. 
The  abstract  Theophrastian  "character"  is  now  a 
well-known  form  of  Jacobean  and  Caroline  prose. 
The  "humours"  of  Ben  Jonson  were  almost  its 
starting-point;  Sir  Thomas  Overbury,  Joseph  Hall, 
John  Stevens,  John  Earle,  Nicholas  Breton,  Geoffrey 
Minshull,  Wye  Saltonstall,  Donald  Lupton,  Rich- 
ard Flecknoe,  and  Samuel  Butler  handed  it  along,  en- 
riching it  all  the  time  with  observation  and  humor, 
until  Addison  and  Steele,  who  also  knew  LaBruyere 
and  the  French  type,  appropriated  it  for  their  Sir 
Roger  de  Coverley  papers,  and  Fielding  grafted  on 
its  stem  his  own  Squire  Western.  Dryden  was  well 
acquainted  with  this  body  of  prose.  But  his  es- 
pecial contribution  was  to  be  made  in  the  field  of 
personal  portraiture,  a  field  which  began  to  be  culti- 
vated in  prose  and  in  verse  somewhat  later  than  the 
other.  The  Civil  War  had  created  a  new  public  in- 
terest in  public  men,  and  during  the  Restoration  it 
had  rapidly  become  profitable  for  political  writers  to 
indulge  at  considerable  length  in  personalities.  The 
Theophrastian  essay  modified  itself  to  suit  this  tend- 
ency, admitting  each  year  a  more  direct  observation 
and  a  greater  proportion  of  particular  and  satiric 
details.  But  the  tendency  was  best  served  by  an- 
other form  of  prose  "character"  altogether,  the 
historical-biographical,  a  form  which  was  evolved 
simultaneously  in  France  and  in  England.  The 
models  were  furnished  by  the  classical  historians, 
chiefly  Plutarch,  Tacitus,  and  Suetonius,  and  by  such 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  193 

modern  writers  of  history  as  the  Italian  Davila,  who 
treated  the  Civil  Wars  of  France.  In  France  the  de- 
velopment proceeded  through  the  historians,  the 
writers  of  Memoires  like  Richelieu  and  Cardinal  de 
Retz,  the  romancers  like  Madeleine  de  Scudery,  and 
the  composers  of  portraits  like  Mademoiselle  deMont- 
pensier.  In  England  the  Earl  of  Clarendon  was  the 
master  of  the  historical  "character,"  with  a  not  very 
close  second  in  Bishop  Burnet.  George  Savile,  Mar- 
quis of  Halifax,  wrote  brilliant  political  estimates  of 
Charles  II  and  others;  Walton,  Aubrey,  and  Sprat 
made  some  of  the  earliest  attempts  at  careful  bio- 
graphical delineation;  and  in  many  cases  remark- 
able traits  were  observed  by  keen  eyes  and  set  down 
on  paper  from  no  other  motive  than  pure  private 
delight.  The  first  Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  Dryden's 
Achitophel,  and  therefore  an  important  name  in  the 
history  of  caricature,  has  left  in  his  fragmentary  Au- 
tobiography a  portrait  which  for  richness  and  clarity 
of  detail  ought  to  have  a  place  among  the  best  known 
passages  of  seventeenth  century  prose.  It  is  given 
here  in  full  because  it  illustrates  better  than  any 
Theophrastian  piece  or  any  historian's  draft  the  gift 
possessed  by  Dryden's  contemporaries  of  represent- 
ing flesh  and  blood  in  graphic  sentences.  The  sub- 
ject is  his  neighbor  Henry  Hastings,  of  Woodlands, 
Dorsetshire,  a  country  gentleman  of  the  old  school 
who  was  born  in  1551  and  who  died  in  1650. 

Mr.  Hastings,  by  his  quality,  being  the  son,  brother 
and  uncle  to  the  Earls  of  Huntingdon,  and  his  way  of  liv- 
ing, had  the  first  place  amongst  us.  He  was  peradventure 


194         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

an  original  in  our  age,  or  rather  the  copy  of  our  nobility 
in  ancient  days  in  hunting  and  not  warlike  times:  he  was 
low,  very  strong  and  very  active,  of  a  reddish  flaxen  hair, 
his  clothes  always  green  cloth,  and  never  all  worth  when 
new  five  pounds.  His  house  was  perfectly  of  the  old  fash- 
ion, in  the  midst  of  a  large  park  well  stocked  with  deer, 
and  near  the  house  rabbits  to  serve  his  kitchen,  many  fish- 
ponds, and  great  store  of  wood  and  timber;  a  bowling- 
green  in  it,  long  but  narrow,  full  of  high  ridges,  it  being 
never  levelled  since  it  was  ploughed;  they  used  round  sand 
bowls,  and  it  had  a  banqueting-house  like  a  stand,  a  large 
one  built  in  a  tree.  He  kept  all  manner  of  sport-hounds 
that  ran  buck,  fox,  hare,  otter,  and  badger,  and  hawks  long 
and  short  winged;  he  had  all  sorts  of  nets  for  fishing;  he  had 
a  walk  in  the  New  Forest  and  the  manor  of  Christ  Church. 
This  last  supplied  him  with  red  deer,  sea  and  river  fish; 
and  indeed  all  his  neighbours'  grounds  and  royalties  were 
free  to  him,  who  bestowed  all  his  time  in  such  sports,  but 
what  he  borrowed  to  caress  his  neighbours'  wives  and 
daughters,  there  being  not  a  woman  in  all  his  walks  of  the 
degree  of  a  yeoman's  wife  or  under,  and  under  the  age  of 
forty,  but  it  was  extremely  her  fault  if  he  were  not  inti- 
mately acquainted  with  her.  This  made  him  very  popular, 
always  speaking  kindly  to  the  husband,  brother,  or  father, 
who  was  to  boot  very  welcome  to  his  house  whenever  he 
came;  there  he  found  beef  pudding  and  small  beer  in  great 
plenty,  a  house  not  so  neatly  kept  as  to  shame  him  or  his 
dirty  shoes,  the  great  hall  strewed  with  marrow  bones, 
full  of  hawks'  perches,  hounds,  spaniels,  and  terriers,  the 
upper  sides  of  the  hall  hung  with  the  fox-skins  of  this  and 
the  last  year's  skinning,  here  and  there  a  polecat  inter- 
mixed, guns  and  keepers'  and  huntsmen's  poles  in  abun- 
dance. The  parlour  was  a  large  long  room,  as  properly 
furnished;  in  a  great  hearth  paved  with  brick  lay  some 
terriers  and  the  choicest  hounds  and  spaniels;  seldom  but 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  195 

two  of  the  great  chairs  had  litters  of  young  cats  in  them, 
which  were  not  to  be  disturbed,  he  having  always  three  or 
four  attending  him  at  dinner,  and  a  little  white  round  stick 
of  fourteen  inches  long  lying  by  his  trencher  that  he  might 
defend  such  meat  as  he  had  no  mind  to  part  with  to  them. 
The  windows,  which  were  very  large,  served  for  places 
to  lay  his  arrows,  crossbows,  stonebows,  and  other  such 
like  accoutrements;  the  corners  of  the  room  full  of  the 
best  chose  hunting  and  hawking  poles;  an  oyster-table  at 
the  lower  end,  which  was  of  constant  use  twice  a  day  all 
the  year  round,  for  he  never  failed  to  eat  oysters  before 
dinner  and  supper  through  all  seasons:  the  neighbouring 
town  of  Poole  supplied  him  with  them.  The  upper  part 
of  this  room  had  two  small  tables  and  a  desk,  on  the  one 
side  of  which  was  a  church  Bible,  on  the  other  the  Book 
of  Martyrs;  on  the  tables  were  hawks'  hoods,  bells,  and 
such  like,  two  or  three  old  green  hats  with  their  crowns 
thrust  in  so  as  to  hold  ten  or  a  dozen  eggs,  which  were  of 
a  pheasant  kind  of  poultry  he  took  much  care  of  and  fed 
himself;  tables,  dice,  cards,  and  boxes  were  not  wanting. 
In  the  hole  of  the  desk  were  store  of  tobacco-pipes  that 
had  been  used.  On  one  side  of  this  end  of  the  room  was  the 
door  of  a  closet,  wherein  stood  the  strong  beer  and  the  wine, 
which  never  came  thence  but  in  single  glasses,  that  being 
the  rule  of  the  house  exactly  observed,  for  he  never  ex- 
ceeded in  drink  or  permitted  it.  On  the  other  side  was  a 
door  into  an  old  chapel  not  used  for  devotion;  the  pulpit, 
as  the  safest  place,  was  never  wanting  of  a  cold  chine  of 
beef,  pasty  of  venison,  gammon  of  bacon,  or  great  apple- 
pie  with  thick  crust  extremely  baked.  His  table  cost 
him  not  much,  though  it  was  very  good  to  eat  at,  his 
sports  supplying  all  but  beef  and  mutton,  except  Friday, 
when  he  had  the  best  sea-fish  he  could  get,  and  was  the 
day  that  his  neighbours  of  best  quality  most  visited  him. 
He  never  wanted  a  London  pudding,  and  always  sung  it 


196         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

in  with  "my  part  lies  therein-a."  He  drank  a  glass  of 
wine  or  two  at  meals,  very  often  syrrup  of  gilliflower  in 
his  sack,  and  had  always  a  tun  glass  without  feet  stood 
by  him  holding  a  pint  of  small  beer,  which  he  often  stirred 
with  a  great  sprig  of  rosemary.  He  was  well  natured,  but 
soon  angry,  calling  his  servants  bastard  and  cuckoldy 
knaves,  in  one  of  which  he  often  spoke  truth  to  his  own 
knowledge,  and  sometimes  in  both,  though  of  the  same 
man.  He  lived  to  a  hundred,  never  lost  his  eyesight,  but 
always  writ  and  read  without  spectacles,  and  got  to  horse 
without  help.  Until  past  fourscore  he  rode  to  the  death 
of  a  stag  as  well  as  any.  l 

Defoe  or  Fielding  or  Scott  might  have  done  a  series 
of  novels  on  Achitophel's  Henry  Hastings;  the  seven- 
teenth century,  so  prodigal  of  its  human  material, 
used  him  neither  for  that  nor  for  any  other  purpose. 
The  type  of  verse  "character"  which  Dryden 
found  at  hand  in  1681  was  already  of  a  good  many 
years'  standing.  In  the  course  of  its  evolution  it 
had  drawn  upon  each  of  the  prose  types,  the  abstract 
and  the  individual,  for  certain  of  its  qualities.  From 
the  Theophrastian  sketch  it  had  derived  a  Euphuis- 
tic,  antithetical  niceness  of  phrasing  which  tended  to 
resolve  it  into  a  pleasant  dance  of  categories.  From 
the  historical  or  biographical  or  political  sketch  it 
had  derived  its  allusiveness,  its  concreteness,  and  its 
pungency.  Ever  since  the  days  of  the  Short  Parlia- 
ment there  had  been  Clevelands,  Marvells,  and 
nameless  writers  who  had  achieved  concreteness  and 
pungency,  but  rarely  or  never  had  a  note  of  niceness 

1  A  full  length  portrait  of  Mr.  Hastings  is  reproduced  in  John  Hutchin's 
History  and  Antiquities  of  the  County  of  Dorset,  3d  ed.,  London,  1868, 
vol.  Ill,  p.  155. 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  197 

been  heard.  Satirists  had  balanced  their  epithets, 
but  only  roughly;  the  movement  of  their  verse  had 
been  spasmodic  rather  than  fleet.  The  Earl  of  Mul- 
grave's  Essay  upon  Satire,  which  was  circulated  in 
manuscript  in  1679  and  1680  and  thought  by  many, 
because  of  its  slashing  directness,  to  be  Dryden's,  had 
showed  great  improvement  in  the  form  of  its  "char- 
acters;" that  of  Tropos  (Lord  Chief  Justice  Scroggs), 

At  bar  abusive,  on  the  bench  unable, 
Knave  on  the  woolsack,  fop  at  council  table, 

and  that  of  Rochester,  for  which  Dryden  was  beaten 
in  Rose  Street,  Covent  Garden, 

Mean  in  each  action,  lewd  in  every  limb, 
Manners  themselves  are  mischievous  in  him, 

had  been  powerful  and  swift  of  dispatch.  Now  Dry- 
den  came  with  his  contribution,  which  to  begin  with 
was  a  metrical  contribution.  His  Achitophel  and 
his  Zimri  captivated  the  town  first  of  all  by  virtue 
of  their  felicity  and  finish.  Without  being  in  the 
least  labored  they  were  felt  at  once  to  be  important; 
they  had  the  accent  of  authority.  The  "characters" 
of  Arod  and  Malchus  in  the  anonymous  Roman 
Catholic  poem,  Naboth's  Fineyard,  which  had  been 
printed  in  1679  as  a  protest  against  the  condemna- 
tion of  Lord  Strafford  under  cover  of  the  Popish  Plot, 
and  which  more  than  any  other  verse  pamphlet,  by 
virtue  of  its  epic  solemnity,  its  Biblical  tissue,  and 
its  general  plan,  gave  Dryden  the  cue  for  his  own 
masterpiece,  had  failed  to  make  a  great  impression, 
possibly  because  Oldham's  more  striking  Satires  had 


i98         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

circulated  the  same  year.  In  Naboth's  Vineyard, 
Jezabel,  King  Achab's  malicious  queen  and  counsel- 
lor, had  leagued  herself  with  Arod,  a  kind  of  Achi- 
tophel : 

She  summons  then  her  chosen  instruments, 
Always  prepared  to  serve  her  black  intents; 
The  chief  was  Arod,  whose  corrupted  youth 
Had  made  his  soul  an  enemy  to  truth; 
But  nature  furnished  him  with  parts  and  wit, 
For  bold  attempts,  and  deep  intriguing  fit. 
Small  was  his  learning;  and  his  eloquence 
Did  please  the  rabble,  nauseate  men  of  sense. 
Bold  was  his  spirit,  nimble  and  loud  his  tongue, 
Which  more  than  law,  or  reason,  takes  the  throng. 

Arod,  in  turn,  had  had  for  his  tool  a  kind  of  Gates : 

Malchus,  a  puny  Levite,  void  of  sense, 

And  grace,  but  stuffed  with  voice  and  impudence, 

Was  his  prime  tool;  so  venomous  a  brute, 

That  every  place  he  lived  in  spued  him  out; 

Lies  in  his  mouth,  and  malice  in  his  heart, 

By  nature  grew,  and  were  improved  by  art. 

Mischief  his  pleasure  was;  and  all  his  joy 

To  see  his  thriving  calumny  destroy 

Those,  whom  his  double  heart  and  forked  tongue 

Surer  than  vipers'  teeth  to  death  had  stung. 

Arod  had  been  invoked  at  another  point  in  the  poem 
exactly  as  Zimri  was  to  be  introduced  on  Dryden's 
stage : 

In  the  first  rank  of  Levites  Arod  stood, 
Court-favour  placed  him  there,  not  worth  or  blood. 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  199 

The  "characters"  in  Naboth's  Vineyard  had  been 
interesting,  but  they  had  not  been  felt  to  be  impor- 
tant, they  had  made  no  hit;  whereas  Achitophel  and 
Zimri,  who  derived  directly  from  them,  within  the 
first  month  after  their  appearance  were  known  to 
all  the  men  about  town. 

Of  these  the  false  Achitophel  was  first, 

A  name  to  all  succeeding  ages  curst: 

For  close  designs  and  crooked  counsels  fit, 

Sagacious,  bold,  and  turbulent  of  wit. 

Restless,  unfixed  in  principles  and  place; 

In  power  unpleased,  impatient  of  disgrace: 

A  fiery  soul,  which,  working  out  its  way, 

Fretted  the  pigmy  body  to  decay, 

And  o 'er-informed  the  tenement  of  clay. 

A  daring  pilot  in  extremity; 

Pleased  with  the  danger,  when  the  waves  went  high 

He  sought  the  storms;  but,  for  a  calm  unfit, 

Would  steer  too  nigh  the  sands  to  boast  his  wit. 

Great  wits  are  sure  to  madness  near  allied, 

And  thin  partitions  do  their  bounds  divide; 

Else  why  should  he,  with  wealth  and  honour  blest, 

Refuse  his  age  the  needful  hours  of  rest? 

Punish  a  body  which  he  could  not  please; 

Bankrupt  of  life,  yet  prodigal  of  ease? 

And  all  to  leave  what  with  his  toil  he  won, 

To  that  unfeathered  two-legg'd  thing,  a  son; 

Got,  while  his  soul  did  huddled  notions  try; 

And  born  a  shapeless  lump,  like  anarchy. 

In  friendship  false,  implacable  in  hate; 

Resolved  to  ruin  or  to  rule  the  State. 

To  compass  this  the  triple  bond  he  broke; 

The  pillars  of  the  public  safety  shook, 


200         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

And  fitted  Israel  for  a  foreign  yoke: 

Then  seized  with  fear,  yet  still  affecting  fame, 

Usurped  a  patriot's  all-atoning  name. 

So  easy  still  it  proves  in  factious  times, 

With  public  zeal  to  cancel  private  crimes. 

How  safe  is  treason  and  how  sacred  ill, 

When  none  can  sin  against  the  people's  will! 

Where  crowds  can  wink,  and  no  offense  be  known, 

Since  in  another's  guilt  they  find  their  own. 

Yet  fame  deserved  no  enemy  can  grudge; 

The  statesman  we  abhor,  but  praise  the  judge. 

In  Israel's  courts  ne'er  sat  an  Abbethdin 

With  more  discerning  eyes,  or  hands  more  clean; 

Unbribed,  unsought,  the  wretched  to  redress; 

Swift  of  dispatch,  and  easy  of  access. 

Some  of  their  chiefs  were  princes  of  the  land ; 
In  the  first  rank  of  these  did  Zimri  stand; 
A  man  so  various  that  he  seemed  to  be 
Not  one,  but  all  mankind's  epitome: 
Stiff  in  opinions,  always  in  the  wrong, 
Was  everything  by  starts,  and  nothing  long; 
But,  in  the  course  of  one  revolving  moon, 
Was  chymist,  fiddler,  statesman,  and  buffoon: 
Then  all  for  women,  painting,  rhyming,  drinking, 
Besides  ten  thousand  freaks  that  died  in  thinking. 
Blest  madman,  who  could  every  hour  employ, 
With  something  new  to  wish,  or  to  enjoy! 
Railing  and  praising  were  his  usual  themes; 
And  both  (to  shew  his  judgment)  in  extremes: 
So  over-violent,  or  over-civil, 
That  every  man,  with  him,  was  God  or  Devil. 
In  squandering  wealth  was  his  peculiar  art; 
Nothing  went  unrewarded  but  desert. 
Beggared  by  fools,  whom  still  he  found  too  late, 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  201 

He  had  his  jest,  and  they  had  his  estate. 

He  laughed  himself  from  court;  then  sought  relief 

By  forming  parties,  but  could  ne'er  be  chief; 

For,  spite  of  him,  the  weight  of  business  fell 

On  Absalom  amd  wise  Achitophel. 

Thus,  wicked  but  in  will,  of  means  bereft, 

He  left  not  faction,  but  of  that  was  left. 

Dryden  continued  throughout  his  career  to  exercise 
a  dictatorship  in  the  world  of  "characters."  Often 
he  seemed  to  be  saying  the  last  word  about  a  man 
when  actually  he  was  saying  almost  nothing;  he 
seemed  to  weave  a  close  garment  about  his  subject 
when  in  truth  he  only  latticed  him  over  with  antith- 
eses. He  became  the  acknowledged  master  of  the 
cadenced  epithet.  Yet  it  would  be  absurd  to  imply 
that  his  success  was  merely  technical.  His  authority 
was  that  of  a  knowing  and  a  smiling  man  as  well  as 
that  of  a  virtuoso;  humor,  imagination,  wisdom, 
and  thoroughly  competent  cynicism  were  also  his 
contributions.  He  testified  in  the  Discourse  of  Satire 
that  the  fine  etching  of  characters  was  not  a  simple 
trick.  '  'Tis  not  reading,  'tis  not  imitation  of  an 
author,  which  can  produce  this  fineness;  it  must  be 
inborn;  it  must  proceed  from  a  genius,  and  particu- 
lar way  of  thinking,  which  is  not  to  be  taught.  .  .  . 
How  easy  is  it  to  call  rogue  and  villain,  and  that 
wittily!  But  how  hard  to  make  a  man  appear  a 
fool,  a  blockhead,  or  a  knave,  without  using  any  of 
those  opprobrious  terms!  .  .  .  there  is  still  a  vast 
difference  betwixt  the  slovenly  butchering  of  a  man, 
and  the  fineness  of  a  stroke  that  separates  the  head 
from  the  body,  and  leaves  it  standing  in  its  place.  .  .  . 


202         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

The  character  of  Zimri  in  my  Absalom  is,  in  my  opin- 
ion, worth  the  whole  poem:  it  is  not  bloody,  but  it 
is  ridiculous  enough;  and  he,  for  whom  it  was  in- 
tended, was  too  witty  to  resent  it  as  an  injury.  If 
I  had  railed,  I  might  have  suffered  for  it  justly;  but 
I  managed  my  own  work  more  happily,  perhaps  more 
dexterously.  I  avoided  the  mention  of  great  crimes, 
and  applied  myself  to  the  representing  of  blindsides, 
and  little  extravagancies;  to  which,  the  wittier  a 
man  is,  he  is  generally  the  more  obnoxious.  It  suc- 
ceeded as  I  wished;  the  jest  went  round,  and  he  was 
laughed  at  in  his  turn  who  began  the  frolic."  No 
one  will  deny  that  Dryden's  pictures  of  men  and 
parties  between  the  Exclusion  Bill  and  the  Declara- 
tion of  Indulgence  are  works  of  genius.  Competent 
historians  agree  that  his  comments,  if  not  always 
fair,  still  throw  a  brighter  light  upon  those  six  years 
than  do  all  other  contemporary  records  combined; 
subsequent  research  has  only  increased  their  respect 
for  the  man  who  left  his  studies  on  love  and  honor 
and  fell  into  such  a  distraction  as  to  walk  through 
the  thorns  and  briars  of  controversy.  Nor  can  any- 
one fail  to  pay  tribute  to  a  mind  so  various  that  it 
could  proceed  from  Achitophel  and  Zimri  to  Jotham, 
from  Jotham  to  the  rollicking  Og  and  Doeg,  from 
them  to  the  sects  in  The  Hind  and  the  Panther,  and 
from  the  sects  to  Bishop  Burnet,  the  Buzzard.  Only 
Pope  in  the  next  generation,  with  his  Atticus,  his 
Sporus,  and  his  Wharton,  succeeded  in  carving  images 
as  rare  as  Dryden's.  The  Queen  Anne  poetasters  as 
a  rule  lacked  the  necessary  intellectual  resources. 
As  the  author  of  Uzziah  and  Jotham  had  rather 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  203 

mournfully  remarked  in  his  preface  in  1690,  "Ab- 
salom and  Achitophel  was  a  masterpiece"  beyond 
which  none  might  expect  to  go.  But  the  cadences 
of  the  Drydenian  "  character,"  if  nothing  more, 
sounded  distinctly  and  constantly  through  all  Au- 
gustan verse.  The  poems  that  answered  the  Ab- 
salom fell  into  its  rhythms,  and  there  were  complete 
copyists  like  Duke  in  his  Review  or  Mainwaring  in 
his  Tarquin  and  Tullia  and  his  Suum  Cuisque.  After 
Pope  the  cadences  were  less  plainly  heard.  Churchill 
went  out  of  his  way  to  recall  them;  but  neither  Gold- 
smith in  his  Retaliation  nor  Cowper  in  his  Conversa- 
tion found  them  indispensable. 

Dryden's  experience  before  Absalom  and  Achito- 
phel gave  him  many  contacts  with  the  stuff  of  human 
nature.  The  writing  of  twenty  plays,  for  instance, 
afforded  him  an  acquaintance  with  postures,  figures, 
and  mental  complexions.  He  was  not  brilliant  in 
dramatic  characterization;  his  men  and  women  are 
seldom  easy  to  visualize;  but  he  grew  adept  in  the 
specification  of  traits,  he  mastered  the  phraseology 
of  personal  description.  His  great  example  was 
Shakespeare,  whom  he  approached  in  gusto  though 
not  in  penetration.  He  has  a  number  of  energetic 
Beatrices,  although  he  has  said  of  none  of  them, 

Disdain  and  Scorn  ride  sparkling  in  her  eyes. 

The  heroic  plays  abound  in  creatures  who  are  garn- 
ished with  symmetrical,  balanced  hyperbole  but 
who  have  no  significance  as  human  beings.  The 
comedies  are  much  happier.  In  the  writing  of  his 
prose  comedies  Dryden  touched  upon  such  stock 


204         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

types  as  the  spendthrift,  the  rake,  the  witty  mis- 
tress, the  scold,  the  affected  woman,  the  swash- 
buckler. English  dramatists  from  Jonson  on  had 
left  him  a  rich  legacy  of  language  with  which  to 
treat  such  figures,  and  he  managed  his  inheritance 
with  some  dexterity.  The  French  comic  writers, 
particularly  Moliere,  furnished  him  at  the  same  time 
with  admirable  models  for  portraits  precieuses.  The 
outcome  was  that  he  acquired  a  turn  for  hitting  off 
the  blindsides  and  extravagancies  of  his  people  not 
so  much  through  action,  though  he  does  that  bril- 
liantly in  Marriage  a  la  Mode,  as  through  elaborate 
comments  by  other  participants  in  the  scene.  His 
Sir  Martin  Mar-All,  originally  a  creation  of  Moliere 's, 
becomes  in  his  hands  a  really  integral  clown.  "I 
never  laughed  so  in  all  my  life,"  said  Pepys,  who  went 
to  see  him.  The  writing  of  critical  essays  and  pref- 
aces gave  Dryden  another  kind  of  acquaintance 
with  the  outlines  of  character.  His  estimates  in  the 
Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy  of  authors  past  and  present, 
of  Wild,  Cleveland,  Shakespeare,  Jonson,  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher,  together  with  the  frequent  contrasts 
and  parallels  which  he  drew  between  famous  poets, 
taught  him  discrimination  in  praise  and  opprobrium; 
the  critical  prologues  and  epilogues  encouraged 
pertinency  and  concentration.  The  writing  of  com- 
plimentary prose  and  verse  did  not  make  for  dis- 
crimination in  the  distribution  of  excellences,  but 
it  added  to  Dryden 's  stock  of  attributes  and  it  in- 
volved important  exercise  in  the  grouping  of  them. 
The  specialized  "character-cadences"  which  jolted 
Achitophel  and  Zimri  into  fame  were  by  no  means 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  205 

new  to  Dryden  in  1681,  although  they  had  not  been 
exactly  prominent  in  his  verse  before.  They  had 
appeared  as  early  as  the  Annus  Mirabilis,  when  it 
was  said  of  the  "Belgian"  admirals, 

Designing,  subtile,  diligent,  and  close, 
They  knew  to  manage  war  with  wise  delay. 

They  had  been  heard  in  the  State  of  Innocence,  when 
Adam  declared  against  woman, 

Add  that  she's  proud,  fantastic,  apt  to  change, 
Fond  without  art,  and  kind  without  deceit. 

Often,  as  in  the  Spanish  Friar,  blank  verse  characters 
had  been  sketched  in  the  later  Elizabethan  cadences 
rather  than  in  those  which  were  to  become  known 
as  Dryden 's  and  Pope's.  Pedro  had  spoken  thus  of 
Dominick : 

I  met  a  reverend,  fat,  old  gouty  friar, — 
With  a  paunch  swolPn  so  high,  his  double  chin 
Might  rest  upon  it;  a  true  son  of  the  church; 
Fresh-coloured,  and  well  thriven  on  his  trade, — 
Come  puffing  with  his  greasy  bald-pate  choir, 
And  fumbling  o'er  his  beads  in  such  an  agony, 
He  told  them  false,  for  fear.    About  his  neck 
There  hung  a  wench,  the  label  of  his  function, 
Whom  he  shook  off,  i'  faith,  methought,  unkindly. 
It  seems  the  holy  stallion  durst  not  score 
Another  sin,  before  he  left  the  world. 

Restoration  blank  verse,  it  will  be  seen,  encouraged 
a  boundless  extravagance  in  portraiture  rather  than 
a  Gallic  justness,  or  appearance  of  justness. 


206         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Absalom  and  Achitophel,  then,  like  Waller's  poetry, 
came  out  forty  thousand  strong  before  the  wits  were 
aware.  Its  impression  on  Dryden  himself  was  fully 
as  remarkable  as  its  impression  on  its  readers  or  on 
the  other  poets  of  London.  Dryden  realized  at  once 
that  he  had  woven  patches  of  verse  which  would 
wear  like  iron,  and  proceeded  to  acquaint  himself 
with  all  the  varieties  of  texture  which  the  new  weave 
would  admit.  From  1681  to  1700  he  wrote  scarcely 
a  poem  which  he  did  not  enrich  with  "characters" 
or  the  cadences  of  "characters."  The  Medal  was 
one  long  likeness  of  Shaftesbury,  with  a  few  concen- 
trated passages  like  the  following,  which  showed 
that  gifted  Whig  sitting  for  the  engraver: 

Five  days  he  sate  for  every  cast  and  look; 

Four  more  than  God  to  finish  Adam  took. 

But  who  can  tell  what  essence  angels  are, 

Or  how  long  Heaven  was  making  Lucifer? 

O  could  the  style  that  copied  every  grace, 

And  plowed  such  furrows  for  an  eunuch  face, 

Could  it  have  formed  his  ever-changing  will, 

The  various  piece  had  tired  the  graver's  skill! 

A  martial  hero  first,  with  early  care 

Blown,  like  a  pigmy  by  the  winds,  to  war. 

A  beardless  chief,  a  rebel,  ere  a  man. 

(So  young  his  hatred  to  his  prince  began.) 

Next  this,  (how  wildly  will  ambition  steer!) 

A  vermin  wriggling  in  the  usurper's  ear. 

Bartering  his  venal  wit  for  sums  of  gold, 

He  cast  himself  into  the  saintlike  mold; 

Groaned,  sighed,  and  prayed,  while  godliness  was  gain, 

The  loudest  bagpipe  of  the  squeaking  train. 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  207 

Mac  Flecknoe,  whenever  it  may  have  been  composed, 
began  with  a  "character"  which  for  sheer  cumulative 
destructiveness  has  no  equal  in  satire.  Says  Fleck- 
noe: 

Shadwell  alone  my  perfect  image  bears, 

Mature  in  dulness  from  his  tender  years; 

Shadwell  alone  of  all  my  sons  is  he 

Who  stands  confirmed  in  full  stupidity. 

The  rest  to  some  faint  meaning  make  pretense, 

But  Shadwell  never  deviates  into  sense. 

Some  beams  of  wit  on  other  souls  may  fall, 

Strike  through  and  make  a  lucid  interval; 

But  Shadwell 's  genuine  night  admits  no  ray, 

His  rising  fogs  prevail  -upon  the  day. 

Besides,  his  goodly  fabrick  fills  the  eye 

And  seems  designed  for  thoughtless  majesty: 

Thoughtless  as  monarch  oaks  that  shade  the  plain, 

And,  spread  in  solemn  state,  supinely  reign. 

The  second  part  of  Absalom  and  Achitophel,  with  its 
Ben-Jochanan,  its  Og  and  its  Doeg,  opened  a  new 
world  of  broad  comedy;  for  once  Dry  den  frolicked 
like  Rabelais.  Doeg,  or  Settle,  and  Og,  or  Shadwell, 
are  irresistible.  Merriment  elbows  resentment  aside 
in  lines  like  these: 

Doeg,  though  without  knowing  how  or  why, 

Made  still  a  blundering  kind  of  melody; 

Spurred  boldly  on,  and  dashed  through  thick  and  thin, 

Through  sense  and  nonsense,  never  out  nor  in; 

Free  from  all  meaning,  whether  good  or  bad, 

And  in  one  word,  heroically  mad; 

He  was  too  warm  on  picking-work  to  dwell, 

But  fagotted  his  notions  as  they  fell, 


208         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

And  if  they  rhymed  and  rattled,  all  was  well. 
Spiteful  he  is  not,  though  he  wrote  a  Satyr, 
For  still  there  goes  some  thinking  to  ill-nature; 
He  needs  no  more  than  birds  and  beasts  to  think, 
All  his  occasions  are  to  eat  and  drink. 
If  he  call  rogue  and  rascal  from  a  garret, 
He  means  you  no  more  mischief  than  a  parrot; 
The  words  for  friend  and  foe  alike  were  made, 
To  fetter  'em  in  verse  is  all  his  trade. 

Now  stop  your  noses,  readers,  all  and  some, 

For  here's  a  tun  of  midnight  work  to  come, 

Og  from  a  treason  tavern  rolling  home. 

Round  as  a  globe,  and  liquored  every  chink, 

Goodly  and  great  he  sails  behind  his  link; 

With  all  his  bulk  there's  nothing  lost  in  Og, 

For  every  inch  that  is  not  fool  is  rogue: 

A  monstrous  mass  of  foul  corrupted  matter, 

As  all  the  Devils  had  spewed  to  make  the  batter. 

When  wine  has  given  him  courage  to  blaspheme, 

He  curses  God,  but  God  before  cursed  him; 

And  if  man  could  have  reason,  none  has  more, 

That  made  his  paunch  so  rich  and  him  so  poor.  .  .  . 

But  though  Heaven  made  him  poor,  (with  reverence 

speaking,) 

He  never  was  a  poet  of  God's  making; 
The  midwife  laid  her  hand  on  his  thick  skull, 
With  this  prophetic  blessing — Be  thou  dull; 
Drink,  swear  and  roar,  forbear  no  lewd  delight, 
Fit  for  thy  bulk,  do  anything  but  write. 
Thou  art  of  lasting  make,  like  thoughtless  men, 
A  strong  nativity — but  for  the  pen; 
Eat  opium,  mingle  arsenick  in  thy  drink, 
Still  thou  mayst  live,  avoiding  pen  and  ink. 
I  see,  I  see,  'tis  counsel  given  in  vain, 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  209 

For  treason  botched  in  rhyme  will  be  thy  bane; 

Rhyme  is  the  rock  on  which  thou  art  to  wreck, 

'Tis  fatal  to  thy  fame  and  to  thy  neck. 

Why  should  thy  meter  good  King  David  blast? 

A  psalm  of  his  will  surely  be  thy  last. 

Dar'st  thou  presume  in  verse  to  meet  thy  foes, 

Thou  whom  the  penny  pamphlet  foiled  in  prose? 

Doeg,  whom  God  for  mankind's  mirth  has  made, 

O'ertops  thy  talent  in  thy  very  trade; 

Doeg  to  thee,  thy  paintings  are  so  coarse, 

A  poet  is,  though  he's  the  poet's  horse. 

A  double  noose  thou  on  thy  neck  does  pull, 

For  writing  treason  and  for  writing  dull; 

To  die  for  faction  is  a  common  evil, 

But  to  be  hanged  for  nonsense  is  the  Devil. 

Hadst  thou  the  glories  of  thy  king  expressed, 

Thy  praises  had  been  satire  at  the  best; 

But  thou  in  clumsy  verse,  unlicked,  unpointed, 

Hast  shamefully  detiled  the  Lord's  anointed: 

I  will  not  rake  the  dung-hill  of  thy  crimes, 

For  who  would  read  thy  life  that  reads  thy  rhymes? 

But  of  King  David's  foes  be  this  the  doom, 

May  all  be  like  the  young  man  Absalom; 

And  for  my  foes  may  this  their  blessing  be, 

To  talk  like  Doeg  and  to  write  like  thee. 

Dryden  had  not  stopped  laughing  a  year  later  when 
in  The  Vindication  of  the  Duke  of  Guise  he  answered 
three  pamphleteering  adversaries,  one  of  whom  he 
believed  to  be  Shadwell.  "Og  may  write  against 
the  King  if  he  pleases,  so  long  as  he  drinks  for  him," 
he  observed;  "and  his  writings  will  never  do  the 
Government  so  much  harm,  as  his  drinking  does  it 
good;  for  true  subjects  will  not  be  much  perverted 


210         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

by  his  libels,  but  the  wine  duties  rise  considerably 
by  his  claret.  He  has  often  called  me  an  atheist  in 
print;  I  would  believe  more  charitably  of  him,  and 
that  he  only  goes  the  broad  way  because  the  other 
is  too  narrow  for  him.  He  may  see  by  this,  I  do 
not  delight  to  meddle  with  his  course  of  life,  and 
his  immoralities,  though  I  have  a  long  bead-roll  of 
them.  I  have  hitherto  contented  myself  with  the 
ridiculous  part  of  him,  which  is  enough  in  all  con- 
science to  employ  one  man:  even  without  the  story 
of  his  late  fall  at  the  Old  Devil,  where  he  broke  no 
ribs,  because  the  hardness  of  the  stairs  could  reach  no 
bones;  and  for  my  part,  I  do  not  wonder  how  he 
came  to  fall,  for  I  have  always  known  him  heavy; 
the  miracle  is,  how  he  got  up  again.  .  .  .  But  to 
leave  him,  who  is  not  worth  any  further  considera- 
tion, now  I  have  done  laughing  at  him.  Would  every 
man  knew  his  own  talent,  and  that  they  who  are  only 
born  for  drinking,  would  let  both  poetry  and  prose 
alone."  So  cheerfully  it  was  that  Mr.  Bayes  shed 
the  venom  of  his  assailants.  The  Religio  Laid  in- 
dulged in  a  more  subdued  kind  of  caricature  when 
it  summed  up  the  accomplishments  of  the  private 
spirit  in  theology.  The  Hind  and  the  Panther  was 
crowded  with  mature  and  calm  though  none  the 
less  vivid  pictures  of  persons  and  sects:  the  Roman 
Catholic  milk-white  Hind  herself  (I,  1-8) ;  the  Inde- 
pendents, the  Quakers,  the  Freethinkers,  the  Ana- 
baptists, and  the  Arians  (I,  35-61);  the  Presbyte- 
rians (I,  160-189);  tne  Brownists  (I,  310-326);  the 
noble  Anglican  Panther  (I,  327-510);  the  mind  of 
the  Anglican  establishment  (III,  70-79) : 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  211 

Disdain,  with  gnawing  envy,  fell  despite, 
And  cankered  malice  stood  in  open  sight; 
Ambition,  interest,  pride  without  control, 
And  jealousy,  the  jaundice  of  the  soul; 
Revenge,  the  bloody  minister  of  ill, 
With  all  the  lean  tormentors  of  the  will; 

the  Latitudinarians  (III,  160-172);  the  Huguenot 
exiles  (III,  173-190);  the  Anglican  tradition  (III, 
400-409) : 

Add  long  prescription  of  established  laws, 
And  pique  of  honour  to  maintain  a  cause, 
And  shame  of  change,  and  fear  of  future  ill, 
And  zeal,  the  blind  conductor  of  the  will; 
And  chief  among  the  still-mistaking  crowd, 
The  fame  of  teachers  obstinate  and  proud, 
And,  more  than  all,  the  private  judge  allowed; 
Disdain  of  Fathers  which  the  dance  began, 
And  last,  uncertain  whose  the  narrower  span, 
The  clown  unread,  and  half-read  gentleman; 

the  Martin,  or  Father  Petre  (III,  461-468);  James 
II,  "a  plain  good  man"  (III,  906-937);  the  Angli- 
can clergy  (III,  944-954);  and  finally  the  Buzzard, 
or  Bishop  Burnet  (III,  1 141-1 191) : 

More  learn 'd  than  honest,  more  a  wit  than  learn 'd.  .  .  . 

Prompt  to  assail,  and  careless  of  defense, 

Invulnerable  in  his  impudence, 

He  dares  the  world  and,  eager  of  a  name, 

He  thrusts  about  and  justles  into  fame. 

Frontless  and  satire-proof,  he  scours  the  streets, 

And  runs  an  Indian  muck  at  all  he  meets. 


212         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

So  fond  of  loud  report,  that  not  to  miss 
Of  being  known,  (his  last  and  utmost  bliss,) 
He  rather  would  be  known  for  what  he  is. 

The  blank  verse  tragedies  which  Dryden  wrote  after 
the  Revolution  were  gorgeously  hung  with  portraits. 
Shakespearean  cadences  prevailed  in  them;  yet  now 
and  then  the  old  lilt  would  insist  upon  a  hearing,  as 
in  the  second  act  of  Don  Sebastian: 

What  honour  is  there  in  a  woman's  death! 
Wronged,  as  she  says,  but  helpless  to  revenge, 
Strong  in  her  passion,  impotent  of  reason, 
Too  weak  to  hurt,  too  fair  to  be  destroyed. 
Mark  her  majestic  fabric;  she's  a  temple 
Sacred  by  birth,  and  built  by  hands  divine; 

or  in  the  third  act  of  the  same  play: 

The  genius  of  your  Moors  is  mutiny; 
They  scarcely  want  a  guide  to  move  their  madness; 
Prompt  to  rebel  on  every  weak  pretense; 
Blustering  when  courted,  crouching  when  oppressed; 
Wise  to  themselves,  and  fools  to  all  the  world; 
Restless  in  change,  and  perjured  to  a  proverb. 
They  love  religion  sweetened  to  the  sense; 
A  good,  luxurious,  palatable  faith. 

The  Juvenal  and  the  Persius,  as  might  be  expected, 
contain  a  number  of  ruthlessly  consummate  de- 
lineations; the  Vectidius  of  Persius  (IV,  50-73)  is 
one  of  Dryden 's  most  mocking.  As  Dryden  pro- 
ceeded with  his  translations  and  his  narratives  he 
came  more  and  more  to  rely  upon  the  antithetical 
paragraph  as  a  device  for  introductions,  transitions, 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  213 

and  summaries.  It  proved  useful  not  only  for  analy- 
zing the  natures  of  men  but  for  sketching  scenes 
and  stating  situations.  Almost  every  page  of  the 
Virgil  and  the  Fables  rang  with  the  familiar  cadences. 
Chaucer  himself  had  not  been  without  his  rocking 
rhythms;  so  when  Dryden  found  lines  in  the  Canter- 
bury Tales  that  were  suited  to  his  purpose  he  brought 
them  straight  over.  Such  a  line  as  this  in  the 
Knight's  Tale, 

Blak  was  his  herd,  and  manly  was  his  face, 

was  no  way  altered  except  in  spelling.  More  of 
Chaucer  yet  would  have  been  appropriated  without 
change  had  his  syllabication  possessed  utility  for 
Dryden.  The  "Character  of  a  Good  Parson"  in 
the  Fables,  elaborated  from  Chaucer's  Prologue  at 
the  request  of  Samuel  Pepys,  was  like  most  of  Dry- 
den's  Christian  poems,  tame.  The  last  "character" 
of  all  was  one  of  the  best.  The  ten  lines  on  the 
Rhodian  militia  in  Cymon  and  Iphigenia  have  as 
much  satiric  meat  in  them  as  have  any  ten  lines  in 
Dryden  or  in  English.  Their  cadences,  which  are 
well  under  the  poet's  control,  express  burly,  amused 
contempt : 

The  country  rings  around  with  loud  alarms, 

And  raw  in  fields  the  rude  militia  swarms; 

Mouths  without  hands;  maintained  at  vast  expense; 

In  peace  a  charge,  in  war  a  weak  defence; 

Stout  once  a  month  they  march,  a  blustering  band, 

And  ever,  but  in  times  of  need,  at  hand. 

This  was  the  morn  when,  issuing  on  the  guard, 


214         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Drawn  up  in  rank  and  file  they  stood  prepared 

Of  seeming  arms  to  make  a  short  essay, 

Then  hasten  to  be  drunk,  the  business  of  the  day. 

Dryden 's  ratiocinative  pulse  beats  with  a  longer, 
slower  stroke,  but  it  is  never  feeble.  "Reasoning!" 
exclaimed  Bayes  in  the  Rehearsal,  "I  gad;  I  love 
reasoning  in  verse."  Tom  Brown,  offering  once  to 
explain  who  Dryden  was  at  all,  said  "He  is  that 
accomplished  person,  who  loves  reasoning  so  much  in 
verse,  and  hath  got  a  knack  of  writing  it  smoothly." 
"The  favourite  exercise  of  his  mind  was  ratioci- 
nation," thought  Dr.  Johnson.  "When  once  he  had 
engaged  himself  in  disputation,  thoughts  flowed  in 
on  either  side;  he  was  now  no  longer  at  a  loss;  he 
had  always  objections  and  solutions  at  command." 
That  is  to  say,  Dr.  Johnson  implied,  Dryden  may 
often  have  looked  about  him  for  images  which  he 
could  not  find,  but  he  never  needed  to  scour  for 
reasons  or  inferences.  "They  cannot  be  good  poets," 
said  Dryden  himself,  "who  are  not  accustomed  to 
argue  well."  Dryden  was  fascinated  by  the  technical 
problems  involved  in  making  rhyme  and  reason  lie 
down  together.  He  was  a  versifier  of  propositions 
rather  than  a  philosopher  resorting  to  poetry,  or 
even  a  poet  speculating.  No  mind  mastered  him  as 
Epicurus  mastered  Lucretius,  or  even,  to  come  much 
farther  down,  as  Bolingbroke  mastered  Pope.  His 
imagination  did  not  deeply  explore  as  Dante's  and 
Milton's  explored.  He  was  not  curious,  and  ab- 
sorbed, and  quaintly  condensed,  like  Sir  John  Davies, 
nor  had  he  a  trace  of  Cowper's  neighborly  discursive- 
ness. His  two  chief  ratiocinative  poems  dealt  with 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  215 

the  most  transitory  of  topics,  creeds  and  ecclesiastical 
expedients.  The  Religio  Laid  and  The  Hind  and 
the  Panther  never  have  been  and  never  will  be  read 
by  many  persons.  The  first  attracted  only  slight 
attention  even  when  it  was  timely;  the  second  was 
never  timely,  for  it  had  its  thunder  stolen  by  James's 
Declaration  of  Indulgence  before  it  was  printed, 
and  within  a  year  it  was  nullified  in  most  respects 
by  the  Revolution.  Here,  as  elsewhere  in  Dryden, 
it  is  riot  his  ideas  but  his  way  of  thinking  that  is 
important.  From  such  a  point  of  view  the  Religio 
Laid  is  a  truly  engaging  poem;  The  Hind  and  the 
Panther  is  a  great  representative  work;  and  Gray's 
"thoughts  that  breathe  and  words  that  burn"  is 
not  an  impossible  phrase. 

It  is  hardly  worth  while  to  become  exercised  over 
the  question  whether  Dryden's  ratiocinative  poems 
are  really  poems.  It  has  been  categorically  denied 
that  argument  has  any  place  in  poetry.  Whatever 
the  truth  may  be  in  vacuo,  it  remains  that  Dryden 
has  achieved  an  effect  of  his  own  which  has  been 
achieved  by  no  other  writer,  in  prose  or  in  verse. 
Congreve  was  off  the  scent  when  he  wrote:  "Take 
his  verses  and  divest  them  of  their  rhyme,  disjoint 
them  in  their  numbers,  transpose  their  expressions, 
make  what  arrangement  and  disposition  you  please 
of  his  words,  yet  shall  there  eternally  be  poetry,  and 
something  which  will  be  found  incapable  of  being 
resolved  into  absolute  prose."  Horace's  test  is  not 
to  be  applied  to  Dryden.  It  is  precisely  in  his  rhymes, 
his  numbers,  his  expressions,  his  arrangements,  and 
his  dispositions  that  Dryden  has  been  an  artist.  The 


216         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

triumph  is  a  fragile  one;  the  spell  would  be  broken 
by  translation;  The  Hind  and  the  Panther  in  French 
would  almost  certainly  be  dull;  but  while  the  spell 
lasts  it  is  real.  Dryden's  devices  were  numerous,  his 
ratiocinative  technique  was  complex.  Tom  Brown 
thought  arguing  in  verse  to  be  a  simple  matter. 
"To  do  this,"  he  said,  "there  is  no  need  of  brain,  'tis 
but  scanning  right;  the  labor  is  in  the  finger,  not  in 
the  head."  Brown,  quite  naturally,  was  not  inter- 
ested in  the  subtleties  which  labor  of  this  kind  in- 
volves. It  may  not  be  too  fantastic  to  say  that 
Dryden's  brains  were  in  his  fingers,  that  he  thought 
in  meter.  Alliteration  in  him  binds  words,  phrases, 
lines,  couplets,  paragraphs  together.  Rhyme,  by 
holding  the  reader's  mind,  as  Taine  says,  "on  the 
stretch,"  gives  to  the  poet's  statements  a  strange 
factitious  potency,  so  that  they  satisfy  the  curiosity 
of  the  ear  rather  than  that  of  the  mind.  Alexan- 
drines close  discussions  as  if  forever.  Enjambement 
allows  the  imagination  leisure  to  thread  its  way 
through  meditative  passages.  Series  of  well-chosen 
adjectives  advance  a  proposition  with  steady  strides: 

Not  that  tradition's  parts  are  useless  here, 
When  general,  old,  disinterested  and  clear. 

Metaphors  unobtrusively  employed  clinch  a  point 
before  the  reader  is  aware  of  the  advantage  which 
is  being  taken  of  him: 

This  was  the  fruit  the  private  spirit  brought, 
Occasioned  by  great  zeal  and  little  thought. 
While  crowds  unlearned,  with  rude  devotion  warm, 
About  the  sacred  viands  buzz  and  swarm. 


THE  JOURNALIST  IN  VERSE  217 

Exclamations  draw  many  meanings  briskly  together. 
Queries  serve  for  transitions.  Catchwords  and  con- 
nectives like  "then,"  "granting  that,"  "True, 
but—,"  "thus  far,"  "'tis  true,"  keep  the  game  of 
ratiocination  animated  and  going.  Aphorisms  set 
off  arguments.  Repetition  and  refrain  speak  pros- 
elyting sincerity  or  else  confessional  ecstasy.  Abrupt 
apostrophes  seem  to  denote  overwhelming  convic- 
tions suddenly  arrived  at.  Passages  of  limpid  and 
beautiful  statement  appear  the  issues  of  a  serenely 
composed  conscience.  Angry,  headlong  digressions 
subside  into  mellow  confessions  of  faith. 

Neither  the  Religio  Laid  nor  The  Hind  and  the 
Panther  can  be  exhibited  with  any  success  in  frag- 
ments. The  strength  of  the  two  lies  in  what  De 
Quincey  called  their  "sequaciousness."  They  must 
be  known  in  all  their  ins  and  outs  before  they  can 
begin  to  impress  a  stranger  with  the  variety  yet  con- 
tinuity of  their  pattern.  If  some  passage  must  be 
quoted,  one  should  be  lifted  from  a  section  lying 
somewhere  between  those  extremes  which  are  "near- 
est prose"  and  those  which  are  most  impassioned. 
This  extract  from  the  Hind's  address  to  the  Panther 
on  the  subject  of  the  Apostolic  Succession  contains 
a  fair  share  of  Dryden's  ratiocinative  accents: 

Tis  said  with  ease,  but  never  can  be  proved, 
The  Church  her  old  foundations  has  removed, 
And  built  new  doctrines  on  unstable  sands: 
Judge  that,  ye  winds  and  rains;  you  proved  her, 

yet  she  stands. 

Those  ancient  doctrines,  charged  on  her  for  new, 
Shew  when,  and  how,  and  from  what  hands  they  grew. 


2i  8         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

We  claim  no  power,  when  heresies  grow  bold, 
To  coin  new  faith,  but  still  declare  the  old. 
How  else  could  that  obscene  disease  be  purged, 
When  controverted  texts  are  vainly  urged? 
To  prove  tradition  new,  there's  somewhat  more 
Required  than  saying:  "  'Twas  not  used  before." 
Those  monumental  arms  are  never  stirred, 
Till  schism  or  heresy  call  down  Goliah's  sword. 

Thus  what  you  call  corruptions  are  in  truth 
The  first  plantations  of  the  gospel's  youth; 
Old  standard  faith;  but  cast  your  eyes  again, 
And  view  those  errors  which  new  sects  maintain, 
Or  which  of  old  disturbed  the  Church's  peaceful  reign: 
And  we  can  point  each  period  of  the  time, 
When  they  began,  and  who  begot  the  crime; 
Can  calculate  how  long  the  eclipse  endured, 
Who  interposed,  what  digits  were  obscured: 
Of  all  which  are  already  passed  away, 
We  know  the  rise,  the  progress  and  decay. 

Despair  at  our  foundations  then  to  strike, 
Till  you  can  prove  your  faith  apostolic; 
A  limpid  stream  drawn  from  the  native  source; 
Succession  lawful  in  a  lineal  course. 
Prove  any  Church,  opposed  to  this  our  head, 
So  one,  so  pure,  so  unconfinedly  spread, 
Under  one  chief  of  the  spiritual  State, 
The  members  all  combined,  and  all  subordinate. 
Shew  such  a  seamless  coat,  from  schism  so  free, 
In  no  communion  joined  with  heresy. 
If  such  a  one  you  find,  let  truth  prevail; 
Till  when,  your  weights  will  in  the  balance  fail; 
A  Church  unprincipled  kicks  up  the  scale. 


VI 
THE  LYRIC  POET 

Dryden  owes  his  excellence  as  a  lyric  poet  to  his 
abounding  metrical  energy.  The  impetuous  mind 
and  the  scrupulous  ear  which  Wordsworth  admired 
nourished  a  singing  voice  that  always  was  powerful 
and  sometimes  was  mellow  or  sweet.  The  songs,  the 
operas,  and  the  odes  of  Dryden  are  remarkable  first 
of  all  for  their  elan. 

The  seventeenth  century  was  an  age  of  song. 
Composers  like  John  Dowland,  Thomas  Campion, 
William  and  Henry  Lawes,  Nicholas  Laniere,  John 
Wilson,  Charles  Coleman,  William  Webb,  John 
Gamble,  and  the  Purcells,  together  with  publishers 
like  John  and  Henry  Playford,  to  mingle  great  with 
small,  maintained  a  long  and  beautiful  tradition  of 
"ayres;"  miscellanies  and  "drolleries,"  with  their 
fondness  for  reckless,  rollicking  tavern  tunes,  urged 
on  a  swelling  stream  of  popular  melody;  while  poets, 
from  Ben  Jonson  to  Tom  D'Urfey,  never  left  off 
trifling  with  measured  catches  high  or  low.  But 
there  were  changes  from  generation  to  generation. 
The  poets  of  the  Restoration  sang  in  a  different  key 
from  that  of  the  Jacobeans;  and  it  was  generally  be- 
lieved that  there  had  been  a  falling  off. 

"Soft  words,  with  nothing  in  them,  make  a  song," 
wrote  Waller  to  Creech.    It  was  charged  that  France 


220         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

had  corrupted  English  song  with  her  Damons  and 
Strephons,  her  "Chlorisses  and  Phylisses,"  and  that 
the  dances  with  which  she  was  supposed  to  have 
vulgarized  the  drama  and  the  opera  had  introduced 
notes  of  triviality  and  irresponsibility  into  all  lyric 
poetry.  Dryden  for  one  was  fond  of  dances,  and 
ran  them  into  his  plays  whenever  there  was  an  ex- 
cuse. In  Marriage  a  la  Mode  Melantha  and  Palamede 
quote  two  pieces  from  Moliere's  ballet  in  Le  Bour- 
geois Gentilhomme.  Voiture's  airy  nothings  also  had 
their  day  in  England.  The  second  song  in  Dryden's 
Sir  Martin  Mar-All,  beginning, 

Blind  love,  to  this  hour, 
Had  never,  like  me,  a  slave  under  his  power. 

Then  blest  be  the  dart 

That  he  threw  at  my  heart, 
For  nothing  can  prove 
A  joy  so  great  as  to  be  wounded  with  love, 

was  adapted  from  Voiture: 

L 'Amour  sous  sa  loy 

N'a  jamais  eu  d'amant  plus  heureux  que  moy; 

Benit  soit  son  flambeau, 

Son  carquois,  son  bandeau, 

Je  suis  amoreux, 

Et  le  ciel  ne  voit  point  d'amant  plus  heureux. 

But  the  most  serious  charge  against  France  was 
brought  against  her  music. 

Music  had  an  important  place  in  the  education  of 
gentlemen  and  poets  throughout  the  Europe  of  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  A  larger  pro- 


THE  LYRIC  POET  221 

portion  of  trained  minds  than  before  or  since  then 
claimed  fairly  intimate  acquaintance  with  musical 
technique.  The  studies  of  philosophers  as  well  as 
poets  included  ecclesiastical  and  secular  song,  the 
uses  made  of  it  being  various,  of  course.  Hobbes, 
says  Aubrey,  "had  alwayes  bookes  of  prick-song 
lyeing  on  his  Table:— e.  g.  of  H.  Lawes  &c.  Songs— 
which  at  night,  when  he  was  abed,  and  the  dores 
made  fast,  &  was  sure  nobody  heard  him,  he  sang 
aloud,  (not  that  he  had  a  very  good  voice)  but  to 
cleare  his  pipes :  he  did  beleeve  it  did  his  Lunges  good, 
and  conduced  much  to  prolong  his  life."  Poets  drew 
much  of  their  best  knowledge  and  inspiration  from 
musicians,  so  that  any  alteration  in  musical  modes 
was  certain  to  affect  the  styles  of  verse.  The  seven- 
teenth century  in  England  was  a  century  of  seculari- 
zation, first  under  Italian  and  then  under  French  in- 
fluences. In  former  times,  when  music  had  been 
bound  to  the  service  of  the  church,  clear-cut  rhythms 
had  been  avoided  as  recalling  too  much  the  mo- 
tions of  the  body  in  the  dance,  and  composers  of  mad- 
rigals had  been  confined  to  the  learned  contrivances  of 
counterpoint.  John  Dowland,  the  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge lutanist,  Thomas  Campion,  magical  both  as 
poet  and  as  composer,  and  Henry  Lawes,  the  friend 
of  all  good  versifiers,  three  seventeenth  century  na- 
tive geniuses  who  were  also  disciples  of  Italy,  intro- 
duced in  succession  new  and  individual  song  rhythms 
which  were  so  compelling  that  by  the  time  of  the 
Restoration  there  had  come  into  being  an  excellent 
body  of  sweet  and  simple  secular  airs  with  just 
enough  strains  of  the  older,  more  intricate  harmonies 


222         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

lingering  in  them  to  remind  of  the  golden  age.  Even 
in  church  and  chamber  music  there  had  been  a  ten- 
dency to  substitute  songs  for  madrigals  and  dance- 
tunes  for  choral  measures.  The  Restoration  saw 
complete  and  rapid  changes.  Charles  II,  who  in- 
sisted on  easy  rhythms  at  his  devotions  to  which  he 
cquld  beat  time  with  his  hand,  sent  his  choir-boys 
to  France  to  school,  and  encouraged  his  musicians 
to  replace  the  lute  and  the  viol  with  the  guitar  and 
the  violin.  The  violin  or  fiddle,  which  John  Playford 
called  "a  cheerful  and  sprightly  instrument,"  was 
as  old  as  the  Anglo-Saxons,  but  it  had  been  used 
before  only  for  dancing,  not  in  the  church  or  the 
chamber.  It  was  the  rhythm  of  the  dance  that  now 
pervaded  theater  and  chapel  and  all  the  world  of 
lyric  poetry.  There  was  hearty  objection  to  the  new 
mode.  Playford  began  the  preface  to  his  Musick's 
Delight  on  the  Cither  a  (1666)  with  the  remark:  "It 
is  observed  that  of  late  years  all  solemn  and  grave 
musick  is  much  laid  aside,  being  esteemed  too  heavy 
and  dull  for  the  light  heels  and  brains  of  this  nimble 
and  wanton  age."  The  preface  to  the  sixth  edition 
of  the  same  author's  Skill  of  Musick  in  1672  continued 
the  complaint:  "Musick  in  this  age  ...  is  in  low 
esteem  with  the  generality  of  people.  Our  late  and 
solemn  Musick,  both  Vocal  and  Instrumental,  is  now 
justled  out  of  Esteem  by  the  new  Corants  and  Jigs 
of  Foreigners,  to  the  Grief  of  all  sober  and  judicious 
understanders  of  that  formerly  solid  and  good  Mu- 
sick." John  Norris  of  Bemerton,  in  the  preface  to 
his  Poems  (1687),  declared  that  music  like  poetry 
had  degenerated  "from  grave,  majestic,  solemn 


THE  LYRIC  POET  223 

strains  .  .  .  where  beauty  and  strength  go  hand  in 
hand.  'Tis  now  for  the  most  part  dwindled  down  to 
light,  frothy  stuff."  Henry  Purcell  objected  on  the 
whole  with  greater  effect  than  the  others  against 
what  he  called  "the  levity  and  balladry  of  our  neigh- 
bours;" for  his  attack  upon  French  opera  in  favor  of 
Italian  opera  was  in  the  end  entirely  successful.  Yet 
even  Purcell  was  well  aware  that  French  music  had 
"somewhat  more  of  gayety  and  Fashion"  than  any 
other,  and  he  was  not  so  insensible  to  current  de- 
mands as  to  compose  songs  for  the  stage  that  were 
lacking  in  Gallic  vivacity.  Fryden,  who  had  se- 
cured the  services  of  a  F  reach  musician,  Grabut, 
for  his  opera  Albion  and  Albanius  in  1685,  was  con- 
sidered in  1690  a  convert  to  "the  English  school" 
when  in  the  dedication  of  Amphitryon  he  wrote  of 
"Mr.JPujrce.lJL  in  whose  person  we  have  at  length 
found  an  Englishman,  equal  with  the  best  abroad. 
At  least  my  opinion  of  him  has  been  such,  since  his 
happy  and  judicious  performances  in  the  late  opera 
(The  Prophetess],  and  the  experience  I  have  had  of 
him  in  the  setting  my  three  songs  for  this  'Amphi- 
tryon."1 Before  Purcell  died  in  1695  he  had  not 
only  written  the  accompaniment  for  an  opera  of 
Dryden's,  King  Arthur,  but  he  had  set  to  music  the 
songs  from  Cleomenes,  The  Indian  Emperor,  an 
adaptation  of  the  Indian  Queen,  Aureng-Zebe,  (Edi- 
pus,  The  Spanish  Friar,  Tyrannic  Love,  and  The  Tem- 
pest; so  that  Dryden  had  the  full  advantage  of  an 
association  with  this  powerful  composer  who,  as 
Motteux  put  it  in  the  first  number  of  his  Gentleman's 
Journal  in  1692,  joined  "to  the  delicacy  and  beauty 


224         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

of  the  Italian  way,  the  graces  and  gayety  of  the 
French." 

It  is  doubtful  whether  the  potency  of  the  musical 
personalities  of  Purcell  and  contemporary  composers 
was  in  general  a  good  or  a  bad  influence  on  Restora- 
tion lyric  style.  It  is  at  least  thinkable  that  as  the 
new  rhythms  asserted  themselves  more  powerfully 
the  writers  who  supplied  words  for  songs  were  some- 
how the  losers  in  independence  and  originality. 
There  was  complaint  at  the  end  of  the  century  that 
the  obvious,  almost  jingling  music  from  France  had 
won  the  field  and  was  domineering  over  poetry. 
Charles  Gildon  in  his  Laws  of  Poetry  (1721)  pointed 
to  a  degeneration  in  song,  attributing  it  to  "the  slav- 
ish care  or  complaisance  of  the  writers,  to  make  their 
words  to  the  goust  of  the  composer,  or  musician: 
being  obliged  often  to  sacrifice  their  sense  to  certain 
sounding  words,  and  feminine  rhymes,  and  the  like; 
because  they  seem  most  adapted  to  furnish  the  com- 
poser with  such  cadences  which  most  easily  slide  into 
their  modern  way  of  composition."  Others  besides 
Gildon  felt  with  justice  that  genius  was  being  ironed 
out  of  lyric  verse;  song  was  becoming  singsong.  Re- 
lations between  poets  and  composers  were  now  the 
reverse  of  what  they  had  been  in  the  time  of  Henry 
Lawes.  Lawes  had  been  content  to  subordinate  his 
music  to  the  words;  for  him  the  poetry  was  the  thing. 
If  it  seemed  difficult  at  the  first  glance  to  adapt  a 
given  passage  to  music,  the  difficulty  was  after  all 
the  composer's,  and  the  blame  for  infelicities  must 
accrue  to  him.  "Our  English  seems  a  little  clogged 
with  consonants,"  he  wrote  in  the  preface  to  the 


THE  LYRIC  POET  225 

first  book  of  Ayres  and  Dialogues  (1653),  "but  that's 
much  the  composer's  fault,  who,  by  judicious  setting, 
and  right  tuning  the  words,  may  make  it  smooth 
enough."  Milton  was  acknowledging  the  generous, 
pliant  technique  of  his  friend  in  the  sonnet  of  1646: 

Harry,  whose  tuneful  and  well-measured  song 
First  taught  our  English  music  how  to  span 
Words  with  just  note  and  accent,  not  to  scan 
With  Midas'  ears,  committing  short  and  long; 
Thy  worth  and  skill  exempts  thee  from  the  throng, 
With  praise  enough  for  Envy  to  look  wan; 
To  after  age  thou  shalt  be  writ  the  man 
That  with  smooth  air  could  humour  best  our  tongue. 

It  was  the  delicacy  and  justness  of  Lawes  that  won 
him  the  affection  of  the  most  gifted  lyrists  of  the 
mid-century;  it  will  always  be  remembered  of  him 
that  he  loved  poetry  too  well  to  profane  the  intricate 
tendernesses  of  songs  like  Herrick's  to  the  daffodils. 
Whatever  conditions  imposed  themselves  upon 
English  song  in  the  Restoration,  Dryden  Jfor  his  own 
paitwAsinclined  to  welcome  swift,  simple,  straight-on 
rhythms,  and  he  was  destined  to  become  master  of 
the  lyric  field  solely  by  virtue  of  his  speed.  His 
range  of  vowels  was  narrow;  his  voice  was  seldom 
round  or  deep,  limiting  itself  somewhat  monotonously 
to  thin  soprano  sounds.  Nor  was  the  scope  of  his 
sympathies  wide;  a  number  of  contemporaries  sang 
more  human  songs.  Rochester's  drinking-pieces, 
like  that  which  begins, 

Vulcan,  contrive  me  such  a  cup 
As  Nestor  used  of  old, 


226         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 
Sedley's  love-lines, 

Not,  Celia,  that  I  juster  am, 
Or  better  than  the  rest, 

And  Dorset's  playful  flatteries, 

To  all  you  ladies  now  at  land, 
We  men  at  sea  indite, 

are  likely  to  touch  nerves  which  Dryden  leaves  quiet. 
Congreve's  diamond-bright  cynicism  and  Prior's 
ultimate  social  grace  exist  in  worlds  farremoved  from 
his  own.  It  was  sheer  lyrical  gusto  and  momentum 
that  carried  Dryden  forward,  that  drew  to  him  the 
attention  of  the  Playfords  as  they  published  their 
new  collections,  that  made  the  editor  of  the  West- 
minster Drolleries  of  1671  and  1672  hasten  to  include 
his  six  best  songs  to  date  in  those  "choice"  volumes. 
Dryden 's  first  song  had  something  of  the  older 
Caroline  manner  in  that  its  stanzas  were  inclined  ..ta 
be  tangled  and  reflective.  It  was  sung  in  the  Indian 
Emperor,  and  began : 

Ah  fading  joy,  how  quickly  art  thou  past! 

Yet  we  thy  ruin  haste. 
As  if  the  cares  of  human  life  were  few, 

We  seek  out  new: 
And  follow  fate  that  does  too  fast  pursue. 

Dryden  passed  swiftly  from  this  to  a  more  modern, 
more  breathless  world  of  song,  a  world  where  he  fell 
at  once,  in  An  Evening's  Love,  into  the  dactylic  swing 
that  was  to  win  him  his  way  into  the  irrepressible 
Drolleries'. 


THE  LYRIC  POET 

After  the  pangs  of  a  desperate  lover, 

When  day  and  night  I  have  sighed  all  in  vain, 

Ah  what  a  pleasure  it  is  to  discover, 

In  her  eyes  pity,  who  causes  my  pain. 

Another  song  in  An  Evening's  Love  ran  more  lightly 
yet;  it  was  marked  by  the  anapestic  lilt  which  on 
the  whole  is  Dryden's  happiest  discovery: 

Calm  was  the  even,  and  clear  was  the  sky,       \  ** 

And  the  new-budding  flowers  did  spring,       \v 
When  all  alone  went  Amyntas  and  I 

To  hear  the  sweet  nightingale  sing. 
I  sate,  and  he  laid  him  down  by  me, 

But  scarcely  his  breath  he  could  draw; 
For  when  with  a  fear,  he  began  to  draw  near, 

He  was  dashed  with  "A  ha  ha  ha  ha!" 

This  lilt  is  heard  in  Dryden  as  many  as  fifteen  times, 
being  at  its  best  in  Marriage  a  la  Mode: 

Why  should  a  foolish  marriage  vow, 

Which  long  ago  was  made, 
Oblige  us  to  each  other  now, 
When  passion  is  decayed? 
We  loved,  and  we  loved,  as  long  as  we  could, 

Till  our  love  was  loved  out  in  us  both; 
But  our  marriage  is  dead,  when  the  pleasure  is  fled; 
'Twas  pleasure  first  made  it  an  oath. 

If  I  have  pleasures  for  a  friend, 

And  farther  love  in  store, 
What  wrong  has  he  whose  joys  did  end, 

And  who  could  give  no  more? 
'Tis  a  madness  that  he  should  be  jealous  of  me, 
Or  that  I  should  bar  him  of  another; 


228         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

For  all  we  can  gain  is  to  give  ourselves  pain, 
When  neither  can  hinder  the  other; 

in  Amphitryon,  where  Dryden  for  once  is  very  much 
like  Prior: 

Fair  Iris  I  love,  and  hourly  I  die, 
But  not  for  a  lip  nor  a  languishing  eye: 
She's  fickle  and  false,  and  there  we  agree, 
For  I  am  as  false  and  as  fickle  as  she. 
We  neither  believe  what  either  can  say; 
And,  neither  believing,  we  neither  betray. 

'Tis  civil  to  swear,  and  say  things  of  course; 
We  mean  not  the  taking  for  better  or  worse. 
When  present,  we  love;  when  absent,  agree; 
I  think  not  of  Iris,  nor  Iris  of  me. 
The  legend  of  love  no  couple  can  find, 
So  easy  to  part,  or  so  equally  joined; 

and  in  The  Lady's  Song,  a  piece  of  Jacobite  propa- 
ganda which  represents  Dryden 's  long,  loping  jin- 
gle in  its  most  gracious  and  mellow  aspects: 

I  A  choir  of  bright  beauties  in  spring  did  appear, 
To  choose  a  May-lady  to  govern  the  year; 
All  the  nymphs  were  in  white,  and  the  shepherds  in 
green; 

The  garland  was  given,  and  Phyllis  was  queen; 
But  Phyllis  refused  it,  and  sighing  did  say: 
"  I'll  not  wear  a  garland  while  Pan  is  away." 

While  Pan  and  fair  Syrinx  are  fled  from  our  shore, 
The  Graces  are  banished,  and  Love  is  no  more; 
The  soft  god  of  pleasure,  that  warmed  our  desires, 
Has  broken  his  bow,  and  extinguished  his  fires; 


THE  LYRIC  POET  229 

And  vows  that  himself  and  his  mother  will  mourn, 
Till  Pan  and  fair  Syrinx  in  triumph  return. 

Forbear  your  addresses,  and  court  us  no  more, 
For  we  will  perform  what  the  deity  swore; 
But  if  you  dare  think  of  deserving  our  charms, 
Away  with  your  sheephooks,  and  take  to  your  arms: 
Then  laurels  and  myrtles  your  brows  shall  adorn, 
When  Pan,  and  his  son,  and  fair  Syrinx  return. 

The  Lady  V  Song  calls  to  mind  two  iambic  pieces  of  a 
graver  sort.  The  song  from  the  Maiden  Queen  is 
subdued  to  a  plane  of  elegy  which  Dryden  seldom 
visited: 

I  feed  a  flame  within,  which  so  torments  me, 
That  it  both  pains  my  heart,  and  yet  contents  me; 
'Tis  such  a  pleasing  smart,  and  I  so  love  it, 
That  I  had  rather  die  than  once  remove  it. 

Yet  he  for  whom  I  grieve  shall  never  know  it; 
My  tongue  does  not  betray,  nor  my  eyes  show  it: 
Not  a  sigh,  nor  a  tear,  my  pain  discloses, 
But  they  fall  silently,  like  dew  on  roses. 

Thus  to  prevent  my  love  from  being  cruel, 
My  heart's  the  sacrifice,  as  'tis  the  fuel; 
And  while  I  suffer  this,  to  give  him  quiet, 
My  faith  rewards  my  love,  tho'  he  deny  it. 

On  his  eyes  will  I  gaze,  and  there  delight  me; 
Where  I  conceal  my  love,  no  frown  can  fright  me; 
To  be  more  happy,  I  dare  not  aspire; 
Nor  can  I  fall  more  low,  mounting  no  higher. 

The  "Zambra  Dance"  from  the  first  part  of  the 
Conquest  of  Granada  begins  with  two  stately  stanzas 
that  shed  a  soft  Pindaric  splendor: 


230         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Beneath  a  myrtle  shade, 
Which  love  for  none  but  happy  lovers  made, 
I  slept;  and  straight  my  love  before  me  brought 
Phyllis,  the  object  of  my  waking  thought. 
Undressed  she  came  my  flames  to  meet, 
While  love  strewed  flowers  beneath  her  feet; 
Flowers  which,  so  pressed  by  her,  became  more  sweet. 

From  the  bright  vision's  head 
A  careless  veil  of  lawn  was  loosely  spread: 
From  her  white  temples  fell  her  shaded  hair, 
Like  cloudy  sunshine,  not  too  brown  nor  fair; 
Her  hands,  her  lips,  did  love  inspire; 
Her  every  grace  my  heart  did  fire; 
But  most  her  eyes,  which  languished  with  desire. 

Dryden  has  used  the  iambic  measure  only  slightly 
more  often  than  the  anapestic,  but  he  has  used  it 
more  variously.  The  two  poems  just  quoted  are 
far  removed  from  the  Cavalier  conciseness  of  these 
lines  in  An  Evening* s  Love: 

You  charmed  me  not  with  that  fair  face, 

Tho'  it  was  all  divine: 
To  be  another's  is  the  grace 

That  makes  me  wish  you  mine; 

or  from  the  lively  languor  of  these  in  the  Spanish 
Friar: 

Farewell,  ungrateful  traitor! 

Farewell,  my  perjured  swain! 
Let  never  injured  creature 

Believe  a  man  again. 


THE  LYRIC  POET  231 

The  pleasure  of  possessing 
Surpasses  all  expressing, 
But  'tis  too  short  a  blessing, 
And  love  too  long  a  pain; 

or  from  a  pretty,  rocking  conceit  like  this  in  the 
Song  to  a  Fair  Young  Lady  Going  Out  of  Town  in 
the  Spring: 

Ask  not  the  cause,  why  sullen  Spring 
So  long  delays  her  flowers  to  bear; 

Why  warbling  birds  forget  to  sing, 

And  winter  storms  invert  the  year. 

Chloris  is  gone,  and  fate  provides 

To  make  it  Spring  where  she  resides. 

The  trochaic  pieces,  such  as  that  in  Tyrannic  Love, 

Ah  how  sweet  it  is  to  love! 
Ah  how  gay  is  young  desire! 

and  that  in  King  Arthur,  sung  in  honor  of  Britannia, 

Fairest  isle,  all  isles  excelling, 
Seat  of  pleasures  and  of  loves; 

Venus  here  will  choose  her  dwelling, 
And  forsake  her  Cyprian  groves, 

attack  the  ear  with  characteristic  spirit. 

The  songs  of  Dryden  never  go  deeper  than  the 
painted  fires  of  conventional  Petrarchan  love,  but 
in.  a  few  cases  they  go  wider.  The  "Sea-Fight" 
from  Amboyna,  the  incantation  of  Tiresias  in  the 
third  act  of  (Edipus,  the  Song  of  Triumph  of  the 
Britons  and  the  Harvest  Song  from  King  Arthur 
are  robust  departures  in  theme  from  the  pains  and 
desires  of  Alexis  and  Damon.  The  incantation  from 


232         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

(Edipus  brings  substantial  relief,  promising  cool  re- 
treats : 

Choose  the  darkest  part  o'  the  grove, 
Such  as  ghosts  at  noon-day  love. 
Dig  a  trench,  and  dig  it  nigh 
Where  the  bones  of  Laius  lie. 

The  one  hymn  known  to  be  Dryden's,  the  trans- 
lation of  Veni,  Creator  Spiritus  which  appeared  under 
his  name  in  the  third  Miscellany  of  1693,  is  in  a  cer- 
tain sense  a  rounder  and  deeper  utterance  than  any 
of  the  songs.  The  vowels  are  more  varied  and  the 
melody  has  a  more  solid  core  to  it;  the  bass  of  a  ca- 
thedral organ  rushes  and  rumbles  under  the  rhythms. 
Scott  printed  two  other  hymns  as  Dryden's,  the  Te 
Deum  and  what  he  incorrectly  called  the  Hymn 
for  St.  John's  Eve;  and  it  cannot  be  positively 
denied  that  most  or  all  of  the  hundrec[jmdjwenty 
hymns  which  made  up  the  Catholic  Primer  of.  1.706 
had  been  translated  from  the  Latin  by  the  great 
convert  sometime  between  1685  and  1700.  The 
question  of  authorship  is  of  no  importance  to  poetry 
in  connection  with  such  of  the  doubtful  pieces  as 
are  commonplace,  like  the  vast  majority  of  English 
hymns;  but  it  is  an  important  fact  that  real  Dryden- 
ian  overtones  can  frequently  be  distinguished,  as 
here  at  the  beginning  of  the  Te  Deum: 

Thee,  Sovereign  God,  our  grateful  accents  praise; 
We  own  thee  Lord,  and  bless  thy  wondrous  ways; 
To  thee,  Eternal  Father,  earth 's  whole  frame, 
With  loudest  trumpets,  sounds  immortal  fame. 


THE  LYRIC  POET  233 

Lord  God  of  Hosts !  for  thee  the  heavenly  powers 
With  sounding  anthems  fill  the  vaulted  towers. 
Thy  cherubims  thrice,  Holy,  Holy,  Holy  cry; 
Thrice,  Holy,  all  the  Seraphims  reply, 
And  thrice  returning  echoes  endless  songs  supply. 

Dryden  was  a  born  writer  of  hymns,  though  the 
hymns  he  wrote  were  seldom  labelled  as  such. 
Praise  with  him  was  as  instintcive  as  satire;  he  de- 
lighted as  much  in  glorious  openings  and  surging, 
upgathered  invocations  as  in  contemptuous  "charac- 
ters." The  King's  prayer  in  Annus  Mirabilis,  Achit- 
ophel's  first  words  to  Absalom,  the  beginning  of  the 
Lucretius,  the  beginning  of  the  Georgics,  and  the 
prayers  in  Palamon  and  Arcite  are  his  most  godlike 
pleas.  "Landor  once  said  to  me,"  wrote  Henry 
Crabb  Robinson  in  his  Diary  for  January  6,  1842, 
"Nothing  was  ever  written  in  hymn  equal  to  the 
beginning  of  Dryden 's  Religio  Laid, — the  first 
eleven  lines." 

Dim  as  the  borrowed  beams  of  moon  and  stars 

To  lonely,  weary,  wandering  travellers, 

Is  Reason  to  the  soul;  and,  as  on  high 

Those  rolling  fires  discover  but  the  sky, 

Not  light  us  here,  so  Reason's  glimmering  ray 

Was  lent,  not  to  assure  our  doubtful  way, 

But  guide  us  upward  to  a  better  day. 

And  as  those  nightly  tapers  disappear 

When  day's  bright  lord  ascends  our  hemisphere; 

So  pale  grows  Reason  at  Religion's  sight; 

So  dies,  and  so  dissolves  in  supernatural  light. 

Dryden's  operas,  as  poetry,  are  unfortunate.    Here 
for  once,  partly  from  apathy  towards  a  form  of 


234         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

writing  which  the  prologues  and  epilogues  show  did 
not  command  his  respect,  partly  from  a  sense  of 
obligation  or  dependence,  he  capitulated  to  the  com- 
poser; thinking  to  produce  new  musical  effects  with 
his  pen,  he  succeeded  in  bringing  forth  what  was 
neither  poetry  nor  music.  The  result  in  each  of 
two  cases,  at  least,  was  what  St.  Evremond  defined 
any  opera  to  be,  "an  odd  medley  of  poetry  and 
music  wherein  the  poet  and  the  musician,  equally 
confined  one  by  the  other,  take  a  world  of  pain  to 
compose  a  wretched  performance."  The  State  of  In- 
nocence, which  was  never  performed  but  which  was 
first  published  as  "an  opera"  probably  in  1677,  is 
not  one  of  the  two  cases.  It  is  an  independent  poem 
of  some  originality  and  splendor.  Albion  and  Al- 
banius  (1685),  however,  and  its  sequel  King  Arthur 
(1691)  deserve  a  fair  share  of  St.  Evremond's  dis- 
dain. Dryden  has  taken  the  trouble  in  connection 
with  them  to  describe  his  labors  as  a  poet-musician. 
In  the  preface  to  Albion  and  Albanius  he  says  he 
has  been  at  pains  to  "make  words  so  smooth,  and 
numbers  so  harmonious,  that  they  shall  almost  set 
themselves."  In  writing  an  opera  a  poet  must  have 
so  sensitive  an  ear  "that  the  discord  of  sounds  in 
words  shall  as  much  offend  him  as  a  seventh  in 
music  would  a  good  composer."  "The  chief  secret 
is  the  choice  of  words";  the  words  are  "to  be  varied 
according  to  the  nature  of  the  subject."  The  "song- 
ish  part"  and  the  chorus  call  for  "harmonious  sweet- 
ness," with  "softness  and  variety  of  numbers,"  but 
the  recitative  demands  "a  more  masculine  beauty." 
The  superiority  of  Italian  over  French  or  English 


THE  LYRIC  POET  235 

as  a  musical  language  is  heavily  stressed;  and  it  is 
plain  that  throughout  the  opera  Dryden  has  aimed 
at  an  Italian  "softness"  through  the  use  of  feminine 
rhymes  and  disyllabic  coinages  similar  to  those  which 
were  to  mark  the  firgil.  The  work  as  a  whole  is 
inane,  and  often  it  is  doggerel;  it  is  at  best  a  welter 
of  jingling  trimeters  and  tetrameters,  tail-rhyme 
stanzas,  heroic  couplets,  and  tawdry  Pindaric  pas- 
sages. One  song  by  the  Nereids  in  Act  III  begins 
better  than  it  ends: 

From  the  low  palace  of  old  father  Ocean, 
Come  we  in  pity  your  cares  to  deplore; 
Sea-racing  dolphins  are  trained  for  our  motion, 
Moony  tides  swelling  to  roll  us  ashore. 

Every  nymph  of  the  flood,  her  tresses  rending, 
Throws  off  her  armlet  of  pearl  in  the  main; 
Neptune  in  anguish  his  charge  unattending, 
Vessels  are  foundering,  and  vows  are  in  vain. 

King  Arthur  is  in  blank  verse,  with  many  departures 
into  song  and  dance.  The  dedication  praises  Pur- 
cell  and  admits  that  the  verse  has  in  certain  cases 
been  allowed  to  suffer  for  the  composer's  sake.  "My 
art  on  this  occasion,"  says  Dryden,  "ought  to  be 
subservient  to  his."  "A  judicious  audience  will 
easily  distinguish  betwixt  the  songs  wherein  I  have 
complied  with  him,  and  those  in  which  I  have  fol- 
lowed the  rules  of  poetry,  in  the  sound  and  cadence 
of  the  words."  The  "freezing  scene"  in  the  third 
act  does  neither  the  poet  nor  the  composer  any 
credit;  the  effect  of  shivering,  even  if  legitimate,  is 
not  exactly  happy.  The  best  songs  are  those  in 


236         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

which,  as  Dryden  says,  he  has  "followed  the  rules 
of  poetry":  those  like  "Fairest  isle,  all  isles  excel- 
ling," the  "Harvest  Home,"  and  the  song  of  the 
nymphs  before  Arthur: 

In  vain  are  our  graces, 

In  vain  are  our  eyes, 

If  love  you  despise; 
When  age  furrows  faces, 

'Tis  time  to  be  wise. 
Then  use  the  short  blessing, 
That  flies  in  possessing: 
No  joys  are  above 

The  pleasures  of  love. 

The  short  "Secular  Masque"  which  Dryden  wrote 
for  a  revival  of  Fletcher's  Pilgrim  in  1700  is  the  least 
objectionable  of  the  pieces  which  he  designed  to  ac- 
company stage  music.  The  masque  celebrates  the 
opening  of  a  new  century.  Janus,  Chronos,  and 
Momus  hold  a  sprightly  review  of  the  century  just 
past  and  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  times 
have  been  bad.  Diana,  representing  the  court  of 
James  I,  is  the  first  to  pass  in  review,  singing  as  she 
goes  a  hunting  song  which  long  remained  popular: 

With  horns  and  with  hounds  I  waken  the  day, 

And  hie  to  my  woodland  walks  away; 

I  tuck  up  my  robe,  and  am  buskined  soon, 

And  tie  to  my  forehead  a  wexing  moon. 

I  course  the  fleet  stag,  unkennel  the  fox, 

And  chase  the  wild  goats  o'er  summits  of  rocks; 

With  shouting  and  hooting  we  pierce  thro'  the  sky, 

And  Echo  turns  hunter,  and  doubles  the  cry. 


THE  LYRIC  POET  237 

The  three  gods  agree  with  her  of  the  silver  bow  that 

Then  our  age  was  in  its  prime, 
Free  from  rage,  and  free  from  crime; 
A  very  merry,  dancing,  drinking, 
Laughing,  quaffing,  and  unthinking  time. 

Mars  next  thunders  in  and  recalls  the  wars  of 
Charles  I.  But  Momus  is  a  pacifist: 

Thy  sword  within  the  scabbard  keep, 

And  let  mankind  agree; 
Better  the  world  were  fast  asleep, 

Than  kept  awake  by  thee. 
The  fools  are  only  thinner, 

With  all  our  cost  and  care; 
But  neither  side  a  winner, 

For  things  are  as  they  were. 

Venus  now  appears  to  celebrate  the  softer  conquests 
of  Charles  II  and  James  II.  But  she  also  is  found 
wanting,  and  so  Dryden's  poem  ends  with  a  sweep- 
ing dismissal  of  three  Stuart  generations: 

All,  all  of  a  piece  throughout; 
Thy  chase  had  a  beast  in  view; 
Thy  wars  brought  nothing  about; 
Thy  lovers  were  all  untrue. 
'Tis  well  an  old  age  is  out, 
And  time  to  begin  a  new. 

The  force  which  drove  Dryden  forward  through  the 
somewhat  foreign  waters  of  song  plunged  him  into  a 
native  ocean  in  the  ode.  His  greatest  lyrics  are  odes. 
He  was  constitutionally  adapted  to  a  form  of  exalted 
utterance  which  progressed  by  the  alternate  accumu- 


238         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

lating  and  discharging  of  metrical  energy.  The  study 
of  his  utterances  in  this  kind  begins  not  with  his 
first  formal  ode,  but  with  the  first  appearance  of 
swells  in  the  stream  of  his  heroic  verse.  That  first  ap- 
pearance, as  has  been  suggested  before,  is  in  the  heroic 
plays,  where  the  thump  and  rattle  of  the  couplets 
is  relieved  from  time  to  time  by  towering  speeches 
like  that  of  Almanzor  to  Lyndaraxa.1  The  State  of 
Innocence  is  virtually  one  protracted  ode.  Partly 
in  consequence  of  a  new  and  close  acquaintance  with 
Milton's  blank  verse,  partly  as  the  fruit  of  his  ex- 
perience among  rhythms,  Dryden  here  has  swollen 
his  stream  and  learned  to  compose  with  a  powerful, 
steady  pulse.  Milton's  paragraphing,  whether  or 
not  it  has  been  an  important  inspiration,  is  after  all 
Dryden's  greatest  example  in  this  instance,  though 
Milton's  metrical  progression  is  little  like  that  of  his 
junior.  Milton  relies  chiefly  upon  enjambement  to 
give  roll  to  his  verse;  as  can  best  be  seen  for  the 
present  purpose  in  the  Vacation  Exercise  of  1628, 
which  is  in  heroic  couplets.  The  bond  of  the  couplets 
is  broken  only  once,  and  then  by  drawing  the  sense 
variously  from  one  line  into  another.  The  poet  is 
addressing  his  native  language: 

Yet  I  had  rather,  if  I  were  to  choose, 
Thy  service  in  some  graver  subject  use, 
Such  as  may  make  thee  search  thy  coffers  round, 
Before  thou  clothe  my  fancy  in  fit  sound. 
Such  where  the  deep  transported  mind  may  soar 
Above  the  wheeling  poles,  and  at  Heaven's  door 
Look  in,  and  see  each  blissful  Deity 
1  See  page  113. 


THE  LYRIC  POET  239 

How  he  before  the  thunderous  throne  doth  lie, 

Listening  to  what  unshorn  Apollo  sings 

To  the  touch  of  golden  wires,  while  Hebe  brings 

Immortal  nectar  to  her  kingly  sire; 

Then,  passing  through  the  spheres  of  watchful  fire, 

And  misty  regions  of  wide  air  next  under, 

And  hills  of  snow  and  lofts  of  piled  thunder, 

May  tell  at  length  how  green-eyed  Neptune  raves, 

In  heaven's  defiance  mustering  all  his  waves; 

Then  sing  of  secret  things  that  came  to  pass 

When  beldam  Nature  in  her  cradle  was; 

And  last  of  Kings  and  Queens  and  Heroes  old, 

Such  as  the  wise  Demodocus  once  told 

In  solemn  songs  at  King  Alcinous'  feast, 

While  sad  Ulysses'  soul  and  all  the  rest 

Are  held,  with  his  melodious  harmony 

In  willing  chains  and  sweet  captivity. 

Dryden  relies  less  on  enjambement,  though  occasion- 
ally he  relies  on  that  too,  than  on  sheer  rhythmical 
enthusiasm,  an  enthusiasm  that  expresses  itself  first 
through  a  series  of  rapidly  advancing  couplets  and 
last  in  a  flourish  of  triplets  or  Alexandrines.  One 
example  has  been  given  from  the  State  of  Innocence.1 
Another  is  the  speech  of  Lucifer  at  the  end  of  the 
first  scene: 

On  this  foundation  I  erect  my  throne; 
Through  brazen  gates,  vast  chaos,  and  old  night, 
I'll  force  my  way,  and  upwards  steer  my  flight; 
Discover  this  new  world,  and  newer  Man; 
Make  him  my  footstep  to  mount  heaven  again: 
Then  in  the  clemency  of  upward  air, 
We'll  scour  our  spots,  and  the  dire  thunder  scar, 
1  See  page  113. 


240         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

With  all  the  remnants  of  the  unlucky  war, 

And  once  again  grow  bright,  and  once  again  grow  fair. 

Eve's  account  of  Paradise  in  the  third  act  is  more 
elaborately  heaped: 

Above  our  shady  bowers 

The  creeping  jessamin  thrusts  her  fragrant  flowers; 
The  myrtle,  orange,  and  the  blushing  rose, 
With  bending  heaps  so  nigh  their  blooms  disclose, 
Each  seems  to  swell  the  flavor  which  the  other  blows; 
By  these  the  peach,  the  guava  and  the  pine, 
And,  creeping  'twixt  them  all,  the  mantling  vine 
Does  round  their  trunks  her  purple  clusters  twine. 

The  State  of  Innocence  was  only  a  beginning.  Dry- 
den's  proclivity  towards  the  ode  grew  stronger  each 
year.  His  addresses,  his  invocations,  his  hymns  were 
only  odes  imbedded  in  heroic  verse.  Even  a  pro- 
logue might  end  with  a  lyrical  rush,  as  for  instance 
that  "To  the  Duchess  on  Her  Return  from  Scot- 
land" (1682): 

Distempered  Zeal,  Sedition,  cankered  Hate, 

No  more  shall  vex  the  Church,  and  tear  the  State: 

No  more  shall  Faction  civil  discords  move, 

Or  only  discords  of  too  tender  love; 

Discord  like  that  of  Music's  various  parts; 

Discord  that  makes  the  harmony  of  hearts; 

Discord  that  only  this  dispute  shall  bring, 

Who  best  shall  love  the  Duke  and  serve  the  King. 

It  is  perhaps  a  question  whether  the  poem  on  Oldham 
is  an  elegy  or  is  an  ode.  The  "epiphonema"  of  the 
Eleonora  is  surely  an  ode  of  a  kind;  and  the  Virgil 
is  one  long  Pindaric  narrative. 


THE  LYRIC  POET  241 

Dryden's  habit  of  dilating  his  heroic  verse  with 
Alexandrines  not  only  grew  upon  him  so  that  he  in- 
dulged in  flourishes  when  flourishes  were  not  re- 
quired, but  it  became  contagious.  Poetasters  like 
John  Hughes  who  lacked  the  impetus  of  Dryden 
learned  his  tricks  and  abused  his  liberties.  There 
was  something  tawdry,  in  fact,  about  all  but  the 
very  best  of  even  Dryden's  enthusiastic  rhythms. 
It  seemed  necessary  at  least  to  Edward  Bysshe  in 
1702,  when  he  was  compiling  some  "Rules  for  mak- 
ing English  Verse"  for  his  Art  of  English  Poetry,  to 
warn  against  license  and  to  place  restrictions  on  the 
use  of  long  lines,  allowing  them  only  in  the  following 
cases: 

1.  "When  they  conclude  an  episode  in  an  Heroic 

poem." 

2.  "When  they  conclude  a   triplet  and  full  sense 

together." 

3.  "When  they  conclude  the  stanzas  of  Lyrick  or 

Pindaric  odes;  Examples  of  which  are  fre- 
quently seen  in  Dryden  and  others." 

Regardless  of  form,  there  always  have  been  two 
distinct  modes  of  utterance  in  the  ode,  two  prevailing 
tempers.  Xhe  Horatian  temper  is  Attic,  choice,  per- 
haps didactic,  and  is  stimulated  by  observation  of 
human  nature.  The  Pindaric  temper  is  impassioned 
and  superlative,  and  is  inspired  by  the  spectacle  of 
human  glory.  In  English  poetry  the  Horatians 
have  been  Ben  Jonson,  Thomas  Randolph,  Marvell, 
Collins,  Akenside,  Cowper,  Landor,  and  Wordsworth 
in  the  Ode  to  Duty;  the  Pindars  have  been  Spenser, 


242         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Milton,  Cowley,  Dryden,  Gray,  Wordsworth  in  the 
Intimations,  Coleridge,  Byron,  Shelley,  Keats,  Ten- 
nyson, and  Swinburne.  Cowley  is  included  among 
Pindaric  writers  of  odes  more  by  courtesy  than  from 
desert,  for  he  was  mortally  deficient  in  afflatus;  his 
importance  is  that  of  a  preceptor  and  experimental- 
ist, not  that  of  a  creator.  His  Pindaric  Odes  of  1656, 
with  the  preface  and  the  explanatory  notes  that  ac- 
companied them,  constituted  a  kind  of  charter  for 
a  whole  century  of  English  vers  librists  who  sought 
in  the  name  of  Pindar  to  become  grand  and  free. 
A  parallel  movement  in  France  involved  a  gradual 
departure  from  the  rigors  of  Malherbe  and  impli- 
cated such  men  as  Corneille,  La  Fontaine,  Moliere, 
and  Racine;  Boileau  making  himself  the  spokesman 
in  1693  when  in  his  Discours  sur  UOde  he  defended 
Pindar  against  the  current  charges  of  extravagance 
and  declared  for  the  principle  of  enthusiasm  in  lyric 
poetry.  Cowley  considered  that  he  was  restoring 
one  of  the  "lost  inventions  of  antiquity,"  restoring, 
that  is,  what  he  believed  was  Pindar's  art  of  infinitely 
varying  his  meter  to  correspond  to  the  involutions 
of  his  theme.  It  was  his  notion  that  Pindar  had  been 
lawless  in  his  splendor,  or  at  the  most  only  a  law  to 
himself;  that  he  had  proceeded  without  a  method, 
now  swelling,  now  subsiding  according  as  his  verse 
was  moved  to  embrace  great  things  or  small.  Cow- 
ley's  Praise  of  Pindar  began : 

Pindar  is  imitable  by  none, 

The  Phoenix  Pindar  is  a  vast  species  alone; 
Whoe'er  but  Daedalus  with  waxen  wings  could  fly 
And  neither  sink  too  low,  nor  soar  too  high? 


THE  LYRIC  POET  243 

What  could  he  who  followed  claim, 
But  of  vain  boldness  the  unhappy  fame, 

And  by  his  fall  a  sea  to  name? 
Pindar's  unnavigable  song 
Like  a  swoln  flood  from  some  steep  mountain  pours 

along; 

The  ocean  meets  with  such  a  voice 
From  his  enlarged  mouth,  as  drowns  the  ocean's  noise. 

So  Pindar  does  new  words  and  figures  roll 
Down  his  impetuous  dithyrambic  tide, 
Which  in  no  channel  deigns  to  abide, 
Which  neither  banks  nor  dykes  control; 
Whether  the  immortal  gods  he  sings 
In  a  no  less  immortal  strain, 
Or  the  great  acts  of  God-descended  kings, 
Who  in  his  numbers  still  survive  and  reign; 

Each  rich  embroidered  line 
Which  their  triumphant  brows  around 

By  his  sacred  hand  is  bound, 
Does  all  their  starry  diadems  outshine. 

Cowley  had  an  interesting  theory  that  the  Hebrew 
poets  were  sharers  with  Pindar  of  the  great  secret. 
In  his  preface  he  remarked:  "The  Psalms  of  David 
(which  I  believe  to  have  been  in  their  original,  to 
the  Hebrews  of  his  time  .  .  .  the  most  exalted  pieces 
of  poesy)  are  a  great  example  of  what  I  have  said." 
And  one  of  his  Pindaric  Odes  was  a  version  of 
Isaiah  xxxiv.  "The  manner  of  the  Prophets'  writ- 
ing," he  observed  in  a  note,  "especially  of  Isaiah, 
seems  to  me  very  like  that  of  Pindar;  they  pass  from 
one  thing  to  another  with  almost  Invisible  con- 


244         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

nections,  and  are  full  of  words  and  expressions  of 
the  highest  and  boldest  flights  of  Poetry."  Gildon 
followed  Cowley  in  his  Laws  of  Poetry  (1721)  when 
he  cited  among  the  great  odes  of  the  world  the  psalm 
that  begins,  "By  the  waters  of  Babylon  we  sat 
down  and  wept,  when  we  remembered  thee,  O  Sion." 
Congreve  wrote  a  Discourse  on  the  Pindarique 
Ode  in  1706  to  prove  that  Cowley  had  violated  the 
first  law  of  Pindar  when  he  discarded  shape;  he  ex- 
plained the  rigid  strophic  structure  of  the  Greek 
ode  and  deplored  the  "rumbling  and  grating"  papers 
of  verses  with  which  Cowley 's  loose  example  had 
loaded  the  England  of  the  past  half  century.  He  was 
not  the  first  to  make  this  point;  Edward  Phillips  in 
the  preface  to  his  Theatrum  Poetarum  (1675)  had 
observed  that  English  Pindaric  writers  seemed  ig- 
norant of  the  strophe,  antistrophe,  and  epode,  and 
that  their  work  seemed  rather  on  the  order  of  the 
choruses  of  ^Eschylus;  while  Ben  Jonson  had  left 
inJiis  ode  on  Cary  and  Morison  a  perfect  specimen 
of  Pindar's  form.  But  Congreve  was  the  first  con- 
spicuous critic  of  Cowleian  vers  libre,  and  it  was  not 
until  after  him  that  Akenside  and  Gray  and  Gilbert 
West  demonstrated  on  a  fairly  extensive  scale  what 
could  be  done  with  strophe  and  antistrophe  in  a  Nor- 
thern tongue.  Yet  the  difference  between  Cowley 
and  Gray  was  far  more  than  the  difference  between 
lawless  verse  and  strophic  verse.  Cowley 's  crime 
had  been  not  so  much  against  Pindar  as  against 
poetry;  he  jiad, writt£.rL_and_taught  others  to  write 
what^netrjcally  was  nonsense.^  The  alternation  of 
long  with  short  lines  in  itself  does  not  of  necessity 


THE  LYRIC  POET  245 

make  for  grandeur;  often,  as  Scott  suggests,  the  effect 
of  a  Restoration  ode  was  no  different  rhythmically 
from  that  of  the  inscription  on  a  tombstone.  Cowley 
was  out  of  his  depth  in  the  company  of  Pindar;  he  was 
constituted  for  wit,  for  "the  familiar  and  the  festive," 
as  Dr.  Johnson  said,  but  not  for  magnificence.  The 
passage  which  has  been  quoted  from  the  Praise  of 
Pindar  is  not  equalled  by  him  elsewhere;  most  of 
the  time  he  is  writing  like  this,  at  the  conclusion  of 
The  Muse: 

And  sure  we  may 
The  same  too  of  the  present  say, 
If  past  and  future  times  do  thee  obey. 

Thou  stop'st  this  current,  and  does  make 
This  running  river  settle  like  a  lake; 
Thy  certain  hand  holds  fast  this  slippery  snake; 
.    The  fruit  which  does  so  quickly  waste, 
Man  scarce  can  see  it,  much  less  taste, 
Thou  comfitest  in  sweets  to  make  it  last. 

This  shining  piece  of  ice, 
Which  melts  so  soon  away 

With  the  sun's  ray, 

Thy  verse  does  solidate  and  crystallize, 
Till  it  a  lasting  mirror  be! 
Nay,  thy  immortal  rhyme 
Makes  this  one  short  point  of  time 
To  fill  up  half  the  orb  of  round  eternity. 

The  trouble  here  is  simply  that  there  are  no  "num- 
bers"; the  stanza  is  not  organic  metrically;  there  are 
no  involutions  which  the  ear  follows  with  the  kind  of 
suspense  with  which  it  follows,  for  instance,  an  intri- 
cate passage  in  music.  Cowley  has  thought  to  fore- 


246         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

stall  such  an  objection  in  the  general  preface  to  his 
folio  of  1656.  "The  numbers  are  various  and  irregu- 
lar," he  says,  "and  sometimes  (especially  some  of 
the  long  ones)  seem  harsh  and  uncouth,  if  the  just 
measures  and  cadences  be  not  observed  in  the  pro- 
nunciation. So  that  almost  all  their  sweetness  and 
numerosity  (which  is  to  be  found,  if  I  mistake  not, 
in  the  roughest,  if  rightly  repeated)  lies  in  a  manner 
wholly  at  the  mercy  of  the  reader."  But  the  most 
merciful  and  best  of  readers  must  fail  to  make  cer- 
tain of  the  odes  of  Cowley  sound  like  poetry.  Cowley 
had  not  a  dependable  ear. 

It  was  Dryden's  "excellent  ear"  which  saved  the 
Pindaric  ode  for  Gray.  Dryden  diagnosed  the  ills 
of  contemporary  Pindarism  with  lofty  precision  in 
the  preface  to  Sylva  in  1685.  "Somewhat  of  the 
purity  of  English,  somewhat  of  more  equal  thoughts, 
somewhat  of  sweetness  in  the  numbers,  in  one  word, 
somewhat  of  a  finer  turn  and  more  lyrical  verse  is 

et  wanting.  ...  In  imitating  [Pindar]  our  numbers 

hould,  for  the  most  part,  be  lyrical  .  .  .  the  ear  must 

^reside,  and  direct  the  judgment  to  the  choice  of 

numbers :  without  the  nicety  of  this,  the  harmony  of 

indaric  verse  can  never  be  complete;  the  cadency 
of  one  line  must  be  a  rule  to  that  of  the  next;  and 
the  sound  of  the  former  must  slide  gently  into  that 
which  follows,  without  leaping  from  one  extreme  into 
another.  It  must  be  done  like  the  shadowings  of  a 
picture,  which  fall  by  degrees  into  a  darker  colour." 
This  is  by  far  his  most  significant  statement  on  the 
ode;  it  is  not  only  an  accurate  analysis  of  the  errors 
of  others;  it  is  an  intimation  of  his  own  ideal,  and 


THE  LYRIC  POET  247 

incidentally  it  embodied  a  forecast  of  his  best  ac- 
complishment. For  his  peculiar  contribution  was 
none  other  than  the  shading  and  the  "finer  turn"  of 
which  he  speaks  here.  He  let  his  ear  preside;  he  let 
his  cadences  rule  and  determine  one  another  in  the 
interests  of  an  integral  harmony.  He  placed  his 
words  where  they  would  neither  jar  nor  remain  inert, 
but  flow.  His  best  Pindaric  passages  are  streams 
of  words  delicately  and  musically  disposed. 


earliest  example  of  all,  the  "Zambra  Dance"  1 
from  the  Conquest  of  Granada,  is  fine  but  slight.  The 
first  ambitious  effort  is  the  translation  of  the  twenty- 
ninth^ode  of  the  third  book  of  Horace  in  Sylvce. 
"One  ode,"  explains  Dryden  in  the  preface,  "which 
infinitely  pleased  me  in  the  reading,  I  have  attempted 
to  translate  in  Pindaric  verse.  ...  I  have  taken  , 
some  pains  to  make  it  my  master-piece  in  English:  ; 
for  which  reason  I  took  this  kind  of  verse,  which 
allows  more  latitude  than  any  other."  The  com- 
bination of  Horatian  felicity  with  Pindaric  latitude 
is  the  happier  for  Dryden  's  excellent  understanding 
of  the  bearings  of  each.  Creech's  Horace,  published 
the  previous  year  with  a  dedication  to  Dryden,  had 
shown,  as  certain  pieces  from  Horace  in  the  first 
Miscellany  (1684)  had  shown,  what  might  be  done 
in  the  way  of  running  the  Stoic  odes  into  elaborate 
stanzaic  molds;  but  Creech  was  most  of  the  time 
perilously  near  prose.  His  version  of  the  present 
poem,  not  particularly  spirited  but  solid  and  just, 
may  have  suggested  further  possibilities  to  Dryden, 
who  indeed  did  appropriate  his  predecessor's  best 

1  See  page  230. 


248         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

phrases.    As  for  the  language  of  Horace,  says  Dry- 
den,  "there  is  nothing  so  delicately  turned  in  all  the 
Roman  language.    There  appears  in  every  part  of 
his  diction  ...  a  kind  of  noble  and  bold  purity.  .  .  . 
There  is  a  secret  happiness  which  attends  his  choice, 
which  in  Petronius  is  called  curiosa  felicitas."    As 
for  his  own  versification,  which  of  course  is  anarchy 
compared  with  Horace,  he  hopes  that  it  will  help  to 
convey  the  Roman's  "briskness,  his  jollity,  and  his 
good  humour."    The  result  is  as  nice  as  anything  in 
Dryden.    The  ear  has  presided,  and  the  shading  is 
almost  without  flaw.     Only  five   lines   disappoint; 
four  of  these  are  Alexandrines  (lines  33,  38,  59,  64) 
afld  one  is  a  fourteener  (line  39).     Dryden  has  not 
learned  as  yet  in  this  least  rigid  of  all  forms  to  dis- 
pose his  long  lines  so  well  that  none  of  them  will  halt 
the  movement  and  kill  the  stanza;  in  the  present 
instance  it  is  significant  that  all  of  the  five  dead  lines 
are  attempts  at  reproducing  effects  of  Nature.    The 
first,  second,  third,  fourth,  sixth,  eighth,  ninth,  and 
tenth  stanzas  are  unexceptionable.    The  poem  begins 
with  a  passage  of  remarkable  carrying  power;  some- 
thing somewhere  seems  to  be  beating  excellent  time: 

Descended  of  an  ancient  line, 

That  long  the  Tuscan  scepter  swayed, 

Make  haste  to  meet  the  generous  wine, 
Whose  piercing  is  for  thee  delayed: 

The  rosy  wreath  is  ready  made, 

And  artful  hands  prepare 
The  fragrant  Syrian  oil,  that  shall  perfume  thy  hair. 

The  eighth  stanza  is  in  a  way  the  most  distinct  and 
final  writing  that  Dryden  did : 


THE  LYRIC  POET  249 

Happy  the  man,  and  happy  he  alone, 
He,  who  can  call  today  his  own; 
He  who,  secure  within,  can  say: 
"Tomorrow,  do  thy  worst,  for  I  have  lived  today. 

Be  fair,  or  foul,  or  rain,  or  shine, 
The  joys  I  have  possessed,  in  spite  of  fate,  are  mine. 

Not  Heav'n  itself  upon  the  past  has  power; 
But  what  has  been  has  been,  and  I  have  had  my  hour." 

This  is  brisk  yet  liquid.  The  current  of  the  stream 
widens  and  accelerates  swiftly,  but  there  is  no  leap- 
ing or  foaming.  The  "cadency"  of  each  line  noise- 
lessly transmits  energy  to  the  next.  Alliteration 
helps  to  preserve  an  equable  flow,  while  varied  vow- 
els heighten  the  murmur.  And  the  monosyllables 
now  have  their  revenge;  for  fifty-nine  words  of  the 
sixty-eight  are  monosyllables.  The  next  Pindaric 
ode  of  Dryden 's,  the  Threnodia  Augustalis,  is  ram- 
bling and  arbitrary  in  its  rhythms;  there  is  little  or 
no  momentum.  A  few  passages,  however,  shine  in 
isolation.  At  the  news  that  Charles  had  rallied  and 
might  live,  says  Dryden, 

Men  met  each  other  with  erected  look, 
The  steps  were  higher  that  they  took, 
Friends  to  congratulate  their  friends  made  haste, 
And  long-inveterate  foes  saluted  as  they  passed. 

There  is  a  pride  of  pace  in  these  lines  that  suits  the 
sense.  When  Charles  was  restored  from  France, 
continues  Dryden, 

The  officious  Muses  came  along, 

A  gay  harmonious  choir,  like  angels  ever  young; 

(The  Muse  that  mourns  him  now  his  happy  triumph  sung.) 


250         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Even  they  could  thrive  in  his  auspicious  reign; 

And  such  a  plenteous  crop  they  bore 
Of  purest  and  well-winnowed  grain 

As  Britain  never  knew  before. 
Though  little  was  their  hire,  and  light  their  gain, 
Yet  somewhat  to  their  share  he  threw; 
Fed  from  his  hand,  they  sung  and  flew, 
Like  birds  of  Paradise,  that  lived  on  morning  dew. 

The  ode  T.o  the  Pious  Memory  of  the  Accomplished 
Young  Lady,  Mrs.  Anne  Killigrezv,  written  in  the 
same  year  with  the  Horace  and  the  Threnodia,  while 
it  is  sadly  uneven  is  yet  the  most  triumphant  of  the 
three.  For  although  its  second,  third,  fifth,  sixth, 
seventh,  eighth,  and  ninth  stanzas  are  equal  at  the 
most  only  to  Cowley  and  are  indeed  a  good  deal 
like  him,  the  first,  fourth,  and  tenth  are  emancipated 
and  impetuous.  The  first  stanza,  which  Dr.  Johnson 
considered  the  highest  point  in  English  lyric  poetry, 
rolls  its  majestic  length  without  discord  or  hitch; 
its  music  is  the  profoundest  and  longest-sustained 
in  Dryden,  and  its  grammar  is  regal.  The  fourth 
stanza  hurls  itself  with  violent  alliteration  down  the 
steep  channel  which  it  describes : 

O  gracious  God!  how  far  have  we 
Profaned  thy  heavenly  gift  of  poesy! 
Made  prostitute  and  profligate  the  Muse, 
Debased  to  each  obscene  and  impious  use, 
Whose  harmony  was  first  ordained  above 
For  tongues  of  angels  and  for  hymns  of  love! 
O  wretched  we!  why  were  we  hurried  down 

This  lubric  and  adulterate  age, 


THE  LYRIC  POET  251 

(Nay,  added  fat  pollutions  of  our  own,) 

To  increase  the  steaming  ordures  of  the  stage? 
What  can  we  say  to  excuse  our  second  fall? 
Let  this  thy  vestal,  Heaven,  atone  for  all. 
Her  Arethusian  stream  remains  unsoiled, 
Unmixed  with  foreign  filth,  and  undefiled; 
Her  wit  was  more  than  man,  her  innocence  a  child! 

The  triplet  in  the  middle  of  it  is  something  of  an 
obstruction,  and  three  near-conceits  give  the  effect 
of  a  melody  scraped  thin.  The  Ode  on  the  Death  oj 
Mr.  Henry  Pur  cell  (1696)  also  suffers  from  conceits, 
being  nowhere  remarkable  save  perhaps  in  the  first 
stanza,  which  aims  at  prettiness: 

Mark  how  the  lark  and  linnet  sing; 

With  rival  notes 

They  strain  their  warbling  throats 
To  welcome  in  the  spring. 
But  in  the  close  of  night, 
When  Philomel  begins  her  heavenly  lay, 
They  cease  their  mutual  spite, 
Drink  in  her  music  with  delight, 

And  listening  and  silent,  and  silent  and  listening,  and 
listening  and  silent  obey. 

It  seems  now  to  have  been  almost  inevitable  that 
there  should  grow  up  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century  a  custom  of  celebrating  St.  Cecilia's  Day 
with  poems  set  to  music;  so  close  were  poets  and 
musicians  together,  and  so  worshipful  of  music  in 
that  age  were  men  as  different  from  one  another  as 
Milton,  Cowley,  Waller,  Marvell,  and  Dryden.  Dur- 


252         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

ing  half  a  century  before  1683,  when  the  first  Feast 
was  celebrated,  Orpheus  and  Amphion  had  been 
among  the  mythological  personages  most  affection- 
ately cultivated  in  English  verse;  and  a  whole  splendid 
language  had  been  constructed  for  the  praise  of  the 
powers  of  harmony.  Dryden's  Song  for  St.  Cecilia*  j 
Day  in  1687  and  his  Alexander's  Feast  in  1697  were 
the  most  distinguished  performances  of  the  century, 
each  making  fashionable  a  new  and  sensational 
method.  There  was  something  sensational  and  mon- 
strous, it  must  be  admitted,  about  the  whole  series 
of  music  odes  from  Fishburn,  Tate,  Fletcher,  and 
Oldham  before  Dryden  to  Bonnell  Thornton  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  whose  burlesque  ode  called  into 
service  of  sound  and  fury  such  implements  as  salt- 
boxes,  marrow-bones,  and  hurdy-gurdies.  There  was 
very  little  excellent  poetry  on  the  whole  laid  at  the 
feet  of  St.  Cecilia,  and  there  was  a  deal  of  cheap 
program-music  offered  to  her  ears,  even  by  Purcell 
and  Handel.  But  the  music  had  always  a  saving 
vigor;  sixty  voices  and  twenty-five  instruments,  in- 
cluding violins,  trumpets,  drums,  hautboys,  flutes, 
and  bassoons,  could  make  amends  of  a  kind  for  the 
paltriest  verse.  Dryden's  odes,  if  artificial  and 
sensational,  were  the  last  thing  from  paltry;  they  are 
among  the  most  amazing  tours  de  force  in  English 
poetry. 

The  Song  of  1687  established  a  new  kind  of  imita- 
tive^harmony  in  which  verse  became"~foT~practi^l 
purposes  an  orchestra,  the  poet  drawing  upon  his 
vowels  and  his  cadences  as  a  conductor  draws  upon 
his  players.  Dryden  had  toyed  with  somewhat 


THE  LYRIC  POET  253 

similar  devices  before.  The  song  from  the  Indian 
Emperor  had  ended  with  the  noise,  he  thought,  of 
gently  falling  water: 

Hark,  hark,  the  waters  fall,  fall,  fall 
And  with  a  murmuring  sound 
Dash,  dash  upon  the  ground, 

To  gentle  slumbers  call. 

Oldham  in  his  Cecilia  Ode  of  1684  had  employed 
some  such  scheme  as  Dryden  was  soon  to  make 
famous.  And  of  course  it  had  been  almost  a  century 
since  Spenser  had  performed  his  miracles  of  sound 
with  verse.  But  Dryden  now  was  the  first  to  declare 
a  wholly  orchestral  purpose  and  to  rely  upon  a  purely 
instrumental  technique.  The  first  stanza  is  a  rapid 
overture  which  by  a  deft,  tumbling  kind  of  rep- 
etition summons  and  subdues  to  the  poet's  hand  all 
the  wide  powers  of  harmony.  The  second  stanza 
slips  through  liquid  cadences  and  dissolves  among 
the  sweet  sounds  of  a  harp: 

What  passion  cannot  Music  raise  and  quell! 
When  Jubal  struck  the  corded  shell, 

His  listening  brethern  stood  around, 

And,  wondering,  on  their  faces  fell 

To  worship  that  celestial  sound. 
Less  than  a  god  they  thought  there  could  not  dwell 

Within  the  hollow  of  that  shell 

That  spoke  so  sweetly  and  so  well. 
What  passion  cannot  Music  raise  and  quell! 

A  suggestion  for  this  may  have  come  from  MarvelPs 
Music's  Empire: 


254         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Jubal  first  made  the  wilder  notes  agree 
And  Jubal  tuned  Music's  Jubilee; 
He  called  the  echoes  from  their  sullen  cell, 
And  built  the  organ's  city,  where  they  dwell; 

although  Marvell  has  only  hinted  of  the  possibili- 
ties that  lie  in  the  figure  of  Jubal  and  in  the  "-ell" 
rhymes;  while  Dryden  has  extracted  the  utmost, 
whether  of  drama  or  of  sound,  from  both.  The  third, 
fourth,  and  fifth  stanzas  secure  by  obvious  but  ad- 
mirable means  the  effects  of  trumpets,  drums, 
flutes,  and  violins.  From  the  sixth  there  ascend  the 
smooth,  softly  rushing  notes  of  the  organ.  The 
"Grantl'CKorus^ which  closes  the  poem  is  cosmically 
pitched : 

As  from  the  power  of  sacred  lays 

The  spheres  began  to  move 
And  sung  the  great  Creator's  praise 

To  all  the  blest  above; 
So,  when  the  last  and  dreadful  hour 
This  crumbling  pageant  shall  devour, 
The  Trumpet  shall  be  heard  on  high, 
The  dead  shall  live,  the  living  die, 
And  Music  shall  untune  the  sky. 

Dryden  seems  always  to  have  been  moved  by  the 
idea  of  universal  dissolution.  The  Hebrew  notion 
of  the  Day  of  Judgment  had  reached  him  through 
the  Bible  and  Joshua  Sylvester.  The  Lucretian 
theory  of  disintegration  had  fascinated  him  when  he 
was  at  the  university  if  not  before.  He  must  have 
long  been  acquainted  with  Lucan's  rehearsal  of  the 
final  crumbling  in  the  first  book  of  the  Pharsatia. 


THE  LYRIC  POET  255 

His  concern  was  with  the  physics  rather  than  the 
metaphysics  of  a  disappearing  world.  Milton's 
Solemn  Musick  and  Comus  spoke  of  a  mortal  mould 
which  original  sin  had  cursed  with  discord  but  which 
on  the  last  day  would  melt  into  the  great  harmony 
of  the  invisible  spheres.  Dryden  is  not  theological ; 
his  finale  is  the  blare  of  a  trumpet,  and  his  last 
glimpse  is  of  painted  scenery  crashing  down  on  a 
darkened  stage.  His  ode  on  Anne  Killigrew  and  his 
Song  of  1687  end  hugely  and  picturesquely,  like 
Cowley's  ode  on  The  Resurrection,  where  Dryden 
had  read: 

Till  all  gentle  Notes  be  drowned 
In  the  last  Trumpet's  dreadful  sound 

That  to  the  spheres  themselves  shall  silence  bring, 
Untune  the  universal  string.  .  .  . 

Then  shall  the  scattered  atoms  crowding  come 
Back  to  their  ancient  Home. 

On  the  third  of  September,  1697,  Dryden  informed 
his  sons  at  Rome:  "I  am  writing  a  song  for  St. 
Cecilia's  Feast,  who,  you  know,  is  the  patroness  of 
music.  This  is  troublesome,  and  no  way  beneficial; 
but  I  could  not  deny  the  stewards  of  the  feast,  who 
came  in  a  body  to  me  to  desire  that  kindness."  There 
is  a  tradition  that  he  became  agitated  during  the 
composition  of  this  song,  which  was  to  be  the  Alex- 
ander's Feast,  and  that  Henry  St.  John,  afterwards 
Lord  Bolingbroke,  found  him  one  morning  in  a 
great  tremble  over  it.  It  is  likely  that  he  worked 
coolly  enough  at  all  times;  yet  he  may  well  have 
exulted  when  the  idea  for  this  most  famous  of  his 


256         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

lyrics  first  took  shape  in  his  mind.  The  idea  of 
casting  a  music  ode  into  narrative  or  dramatic  form 
was  itself  a  new  and  happy  one.  The  materials  for 
the  story  of  Alexander  probably  came  harder  and 
were  only  gradually  pieced  together  in  Dryden's 
imagination.  It  had  been  a  commonplace  among 
classical,  post-classical,  and  Renaissance  writers  that 
ancient  Greek  music,  especially  "the  lost  sympho- 
nies," had  strangely  affected  the  spirits  of  men;  Py- 
thagoras had  cured  distempers  and  passions  by  the 
application  of  appropriate  harmonies.  Longinus 
had  written  (xxxiv):  "Do  not  we  observe  that 
the  sound  of  wind-instruments  moves  the  souls  of 
those  that  hear  them,  throws  them  into  an  ecstasy, 
and  hurries  them  sometimes  into  a  kind  of  fury?" 
Athenaeus  had  cited  Clitarchus  as  authority  for  the 
statement  that  Thais  was  the  cause  of  the  burning 
of  the  palace  in  Persepolis.  Suidas,  quoted  by  John 
Playford  in  his  Skill  of  Musick,  had  related  that 
Timotheus  moved  Alexander  to  arms.  "But  the 
story  of  Ericus  musician,"  added  Playford,  "passes 
all,  who  had  given  forth,  that  by  his  musick  he  could 
drive  men  into  what  affections  he  listed;  being  re- 
quired by  Bonus  King  of  Denmark  to  put  his  skill 
in  practice,  he  with  his  harp  or  polycord  lyra  ex- 
pressed such  effectual  melody  and  harmony  in  the 
variety  of  changes  in  several  keyes,  and  in  such  ex- 
cellent Fugg's  and  sprightly  ayres,  that  his  auditors 
began  first  to  be  moved  with  some  strange  passions, 
but  ending  his  excellent  voluntary  with  some  choice 
fancy  upon  this  Phrygian  mood,  the  king's  passions 
were  altered,  and  excited  to  that  height,  that  he  fell 


THE  LYRIC  POET  257 

upon  his  most  trusty  friends  which  were  near  him, 
and  slew  some  of  them  with  his  fist  for  lack  of  an- 
other weapon;  which  our  musician  perceiving,  ended 
with  the  sober  Dorick;  the  King  came  to  himself, 
and  much  lamented  what  he  had  done."  Burton, 
after  Cardan  the  mathematician,  had  said  in  the 
Anatomy  of  Melancholy  that  "Timotheus  the  musi- 
cian compelled  Alexander  to  skip  up  and  down  and 
leave  his  dinner."  Cowley's  thirty-second  note  to 
the  first  book  of  the  Davideis,  a  veritable  discourse 
on  the  powers  of  harmony,  had  contained  the  remark: 
"Timotheus  by  Musick  enflamed  and  appeased  Alex- 
ander to  what  degrees  he  pleased."  Tom  D'Urfey's 
ode  for  St.  Cecilia's  Day  in  1691  had  run  merrily 
on  through  change  after  change  of  tempo,  somewhat 
in  the  manner  which  Dry  den  was  to  employ: 

And  first  the  trumpet's  part 

Inflames  the  hero's  heart;  .  .  . 

And  now  he  thinks  he's  in  the  field, 

And  now  he  makes  the  foe  to  yield,  .  .  . 

The  battle  done,  all  loud  alarms  do  cease, 

Hark,  how  the  charming  flutes  conclude  the  peace  .  .  . 

Excesses  of  pleasure  now  crowd  on  apace. 

How  sweetly  the  violins  sound  to  each  bass, 

The  ravishing  trebles  delight  every  ear, 

And  mirth  in  a  scene  of  true  joy  does  appear.  .  .  . 

Now  beauty's  power  inflames  my  breast  again, 

I  sigh  and  languish  with  a  pleasing  pain. 

The  notes  so  soft,  so  sweet  the  air, 
The  soul  of  love  must  sure  be  there, 

That  mine  in  rapture  charms,  and  drives  away  despair. 

In    Motteux's    Gentleman's    Journal    for    January, 


258         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

1691-2  was  written:  "That  admirable  musician,  who 
could  raise  a  noble  fury  in  Alexander,  and  lay  it  as 
easily,  and  make  him  put  on  the  Hero,  or  the  Lover, 
when  he  pleased,  is  too  great  an  Instance  of  the 
power  of  Music  to  be  forgotten."  And  only  three 
months  before  Dryden  was  writing  to  his  sons  at 
Rome,  Jeremy  Collier,  who  is  seldom  thought  to 
have  been  a  benefactor  of  Restoration  poets,  had 
published  in  the  second  part  of  his  Essays  upon 
Several  Moral  Subjects  an  essay  Of  Musick  wherein 
it  was  told  how  "Timotheus,  a  Grecian,  was  so  great 
a  Master,  that  he  could  make  a  man  storm  and 
swagger  like  a  Tempest,  and  then,  by  altering  the 
Notes,  and  the  Time,  he  would  take  him  down  again, 
and  sweeten  his  humour  in  a  trice.  One  time,  when 
Alexander  was  at  Dinner,  this  Man  played  him  a 
Phrygian  Air:  the  Prince  immediately  rises,  snatches 
up  his  Lance,  and  puts  himself  into  a  Posture  of 
Fighting.  And  the  Retreat  was  no  sooner  sounded 
by  the  Change  of  Harmony,  but  his  Arms  were 
,  Grounded,  and  his  Fire  extinct;  and  he  sate  down 
'  as  orderly  as  if  he  had  come  from  one  of  Aristotle's 
Lectures."  Such  were  the  scraps  that  lay  at  Dry- 
den's  hand  in  September  of  1697. 

"I  am  glad  to  hear  from  all  hands,"  he  wrote  to 
Tonson  in  December,  "that  my  Ode  is  esteemed  the 
fcest  of  all  my  poetry,  by  all  the  town:  I  thought  so 
myself  when  I  writ  it;  but  being  old  I  mistrusted  my 
own  judgment."  It  is  a  question  whether  Absalom 
and  Achitophel  and  the  Oldham  are  not  better  poetry 
than  Alexander's  Feast,  which  perhaps  is  only  im- 
mortal ragtime.  Some  of  the  cadences  are  disap- 


THE  LYRIC  POET  259 

pointing;  lines  128,  139,  140,  and  145  puzzle  and 
lower  the  voice  of  the  reader.  Yet  few  poems  of 
equal  length  anywhere  have  been  brought  to  a  finish 
on  so  consistently  proud  a  level  and  in  such  bounding 
spirits.  Here  is  brilliant  panorama;  here  are  re- 
sponsive, ringing  cadences;  here  is  good-nature  on 
the  grand  scale. 

And  thrice  he  routed  all  his  foes,  and  thrice  he 
slew  the  slain. 

The  enormous  vitality  of  this  ode  not  only  has  in- 
sured its  own  long  life;  for  a  century  it  inspired  am- 
bitious imitators  and  nameless  parodists.  John 
Wilkes  in  1774  *  and  the  Prince  of  Wales  in  1795  z 
found  themselves  hoisted  in  mockery  to  the  highest 
throne  that  pamphleteers  could  conceive,  the  im- 
perial throne  of  Philip's  warlike  son. 

i  \y s's  Feast,  or  Dryden  Travesti:  A  Mock  Pindaric  Inscribed  to 

His  Most  Incorruptible  Highness  Prince  Patriotism.     London.     1774. 
*  Marriage  Ode  Royal  After  the  Manner  of  Dryden.     1795. 


VII 
THE  NARRATIVE  POET 

That  the  greatest  of  all  poems  have  been  narrative 
does  not  prove  that  the  highest  function  of  poetry 
is  to  tell  a  story.  It  may  merely  have  happened  to 
be  in  connection  with  accounts  of  human  actions 
that  poets  could  perform  to  the  best  advantage. 
The  conquest  which  prose  fiction  has  made  in  the 
world  of  story  since  the  day  of  Dryden  may  or  may 
not  signify  that  poetry  is  beaten;  whether  the  with- 
drawal by  poets  into  special  corners  where  they  cul- 
tivate fine  static  temperaments  rather  than  copious 
narrative  sympathies  denotes  that  the  poetry  of  the 
future  will  not  be  important  like  the  poetry  of  the 
past,  only  time  will  tell.  Certain  it  is  that  the  idea 
of  narration  in  verse  is  often  now  discredited.  At 
any  time  in  the  seventeenth  century  this  would  have 
been  heresy.  Among  theorists  at  least,  occasional, 
journalistic,  or  lyrical  verse  was  seldom  if  ever  taken 
seriously;  the  epic  was  undisputed  king.  Yet  out 
of  the  quantities  of  narrative  verse  which  that  age 
produced  little  had  much  or  any  meaning.  The  de- 
cay of  the  heroic  tradition  was  already  well-nigh 
complete.  Even  Milton's  triumph,  to  modern  secu- 
lar minds,  is  one  chiefly  of  style  and  mood;  his  su- 
preme moments  are  moments  of  gorgeous  reminis- 
cence, when  in  his  imagination  the  regions  and  the 


THE  NARRATIVE  POET  261 

deeds    made    famous    centuries    before    illustrium 
poetarum  fabulis  come  sweeping  by. 

There  is  no  reason  noffeelf  sorry  with  Scott  that 
Dryden  never  got|round|to^writing  his  projected  epic 
on  Arthur  or  the^Black  Prince.  It  would  most  likely 
have  been  a  disappointment;  much  as  Dryden  re- 
vered the  institution  of  the  heroic  poem,  he  had  not 
the  power  to  illuminate  and  interpret  heroic  mo- 
tives. His  contribution  was  critical.  His  Essay  of 
Heroic  Plays,  his  Apology  for  Heroic  Poetry,  his  Dis- 
course of  Satire  and  the  dedication  of  his  JEneis 
summed  up  contemporary  tastes  and  theories  in  this 
department  as  no  other  group  of  essays  did;  he  was 
the  sponsor  but  not  the  chief  performer.  His  trib- 
utes to  the  epic,  "the  most  noble,  the  most  pleasant, 
and  the  most  instructive  way  of  writing  in  verse," 
as  well  as  "the  greatest  work  of  human  nature," 
were  many  and  resounding.  His  requirements  for 
the  writer  of  an  epic,  as  set  forth  in  the  Discourse  of 
Satire,  were  many  and  rigorous;  a  heroic  poet,  he 
said,  is  one  "who,  to  his  natural  endowments,  of  a 
large  invention,  a  ripe  judgment,  and  a  strong  mem- 
ory, has  joined  the  knowledge  of  the  liberal  arts  and 
sciences,  and  particularly  moral  philosophy,  the 
mathematics,  geography,  and  history,  and  with  all 
these  qualifications  is  born  a  poet;  knows,  and  can 
practice  the  variety  of  numbers,  and  is  master  of 
the  language  in  which  he  writes."  Dryden's  narra- 
tive sphere  was  a  slighter  one  than  this;  it  was  the 
sphere  of  the  episode  or  the  tale.  He  is  even  said 
to  have  been  capable  of  being  intrigued  by  humble 
ballads.  Addison  wrote  in  the  eighty-fifth  Spectator, 


262         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

"I  have  heard  that  the  late  Lord  Dorset  .  .  .  had 
a  numerous  collection  of  old  English  ballads,  and 
took  a  particular  pleasure  in  the  reading  of  them. 
I  can  affirm  the  same  of  Mr.  Dryden;"  and  Gildon, 
in  A  New  Rehearsal  (1714),  declared  his  victim  Rowe 
another  Mr.  Bayes  in  "his  admiration  of  some  odd 
books,  as  'Reynard  the  Fox,'  and  the  old  ballads  of 
'Jane  Shore. ":  Dryden's  specialty  was  the  short 
story;  he  belongs  in  the  company  not  of  Homer, 
Virgil,  Dante,  Spenser,  and  Milton,  but  of  Ovid, 
Chaucer,  Crabbe,  Scott,  Macaulay,  Byron,  Keats, 
Tennyson,  Longfellow,  Arnold,  Morris,  and  Mase- 
field. 

Dryden  was  neither  an  original  nor  a  skilful  weaver 
of  plots.  He  did  not  tell  a  story  particularly  well. 
Yet  he  always  had  the  air  of  telling  a  story  well;  he 
was  master  of  a  swift,  plausible  manner.  He  was 
not  adept  in  psychological  research,  or  refined,  or 
especially  true;  he  was  often  slovenly  and  gross;  but 
he  was  never  limp  or  lame.  His  verse  was  as  strong 
as  the  English  mastiff  and  as  fleet  as  the  Frenchman's 
greyhound;  and  like  a  good  hound  it  never  tired. 
"I  must  confess,"  said  Daniel  in  his  Defense  of  Rime, 
"that  to  mine  own  ear  those  continual  cadences  of 
couplets  used  in  long  and  continued  poems  are  very 
tiresome  and  unpleasing,  by  reason  that  still  me- 
thinks  they  run  on  with  a  sound  of  one  nature,  and 
a  kind  of  certainty  which  stuffs  the  delight  rather 
than  entertains  it."  Dryden  was  not  without  monot- 
ony and  stiffness;  yet  the  last  analysis  must  find  him 
fresh  and  various  as  few  other  poets  have  been. 
Spiritually,  there  was  always  his  capacious  cynicism 


THE  NARRATIVE  POET  263 

to  keep  him  sensible;  technically,  there  was  always 
his  speed  to  dissolve  his  blemishes  and  lend  a  vivid- 
ness to  his  materials  good  and  bad.  "The  wheels 
take  fire  from  the  mere  rapidity  of  their  motion,"  ob- 
served Coleridge  in  the  Biographia  Litteraria.  Dry- 
den  paused  only  to  gather  momentum.  There  was 
pulse  in  his  narrative  medium  as  there  had  been  pulse 
in  his  occasional,  satirical,  and  lyrical  mediums;  his 
settings,  his  addresses,  his  descriptions  of  persons, 
his  expositions  of  emotional  cause  and  effect,  were 
never  dead;  they  were  magazines  of  narrative  energy. 
There  can  hardly  be  said  to  exist  in  English  a  per- 
fect verse  instrument  for  narrative;  continuous  coup- 
lets give  too  little  pause,  while  stanzas  halt  too  often. 
Dryden  has  come  as  near  as  any  poet  to  a  durable 
compromise.  He  can  run  straight  on  as  far  as  he 
likes;  then  when  he  likes  he  can  bring  himself  up 
sharply,  and  go  on  by  leisurely  stages.  He  can  hesi- 
tate and  exclaim,  he  can  stop  and  wonder,  he  can 
meditate  and  meander. 

Dryden's  first  narrative  poem  was  not  a  tale  but 
a  chronicle.  The  Annus  Mirabilis  was  almost  the 
last  echo  of  Lucan  in  English.  Warner,  Daniel,  and 
Drayton  had  been  the  Elizabethan  "historians  in 
verse";  Dryden  in  1666  constituted  himself  the 
chronicler  of  Charles's  war  with  the  Dutch  and  of 
the  Great  Fire  of  London.  He  was  hardly  geared, 
like  old  Nestor  in  Shakespeare's  Troilus  and  Cressida, 
for  walking  hand  in  hand  with  Time;  his  gait  was 
better  suited  to  breathless,  bizarre  romance.  His 
heroic  stanzas  stalk  along  with  a  quaint,  spectral 
dignity,  while  no  great  amount  of  history  gets  told, 


264         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

though  more  perhaps  than  got  told  in  the  elaborately 
embroidered  stanzas  of  the  Elizabethans.  The 
couplet,  not  the  quatrain,  was  to  be  his  vehicle. 

The  writing  of  plays  gave  Dryden's  hand  valuable 
practice  in  the  quick  sketching  of  action.  There  was 
an  audience  in  this  case  which  needed  to  know  briefly 
what  had  happened  off  the  stage.  The  necessity 
was  for  being  straightforward,  not  for  wandering 
among  rare  similes  and  precious  allusions.  A  fair 
example  is  the  speech  of  the  Duke  of  Arcos  to  King 
Ferdinand  in  the  second  part  of  the  Conquest  of 
Granada,  recounting  the  death  of  the  master  of  Al- 
cantara : 

Our  soldiers  marched  together  on  the  plain; 

We  two  rode  on,  and  left  them  far  behind, 

Till  coming  where  we  found  the  valley  wind, 

We  saw  these  Moors;  who,  swiftly  as  they  could, 

Ran  on  to  gain  the  covert  of  a  wood. 

This  we  observed ;  and,  having  crossed  their  way, 

The  lady,  out  of  breath,  was  forced  to  stay; 

The  man  then  stood,  and  straight  his  faulchion  drew; 

Then  told  us,  we  in  vain  did  those  pursue, 

Whom  their  ill  fortune  to  despair  did  drive, 

And  yet,  whom  we  should  never  take  alive. 

Neglecting  this,  the  master  straight  spurred  on; 

But  the  active  Moor  his  horse's  shock  did  shun, 

And,  ere  his  rider  from  his  reach  could  go, 

Finished  the  combat  with  one  deadly  blow. 

I,  to  revenge  my  friend,  prepared  to  fight; 

But  now  our  foremost  men  were  come  in  sight, 

Who  soon  would  have  dispatched  him  on  the  place, 

Had  I  not  saved  him  from  a  death  so  base, 

And  brought  him  to  attend  your  royal  doom. 


THE  NARRATIVE  POET  265 

This  is  far  from  Dryden's  maturest  narrative  writ- 
ing; the  inversions  are  stilted,  and  the  movement  in 
general  is  somewhat  mechanical.  Its  only  signifi- 
cance lies  in  its  directness  and  its  clarity.  The 
rhymes  are  less  relied  on  to  accentuate  the  movement 
than  is  usually  to  be  the  case  hereafter.  Dryden  at 
his  best  did  not  smother  his  rhymes,  but  propelled 
himself  by  them  and  by  the  steady  forward  stroke 
of  the  end-stopped  couplet. 

Three  of  the  satires  gained  by  being  cast  in  a  nar- 
rative mould.  Absalom  and  Achitophel,  which  took 
its  tone  from  Paradise  Lost  and  Cowley's  Davideis, 
was  an  epic  situation  overlaid  with  humor  and  huge 
scorn.  Mac  Flecknoe  was  a  full-blown  mock-heroic 
incident.  The  Hind  and  the  Panther  began  and 
ended  on  a  note  that  was  neither  heroic  nor  familiar, 
but  was  well  adjusted  to  Dryden's  complicated  mo- 
tive. Near  the  close  of  the  second  part  there  is  a 
passage  that  positively  invites: 

By  this  the  Hind  had  reached  her  lonely  cell, 
And  vapours  rose,  and  dews  unwholesome  fell. 
When  she,  by  frequent  observation  wise, 
As  one  who  long  on  Heaven  had  fixed  her  eyes, 
Discerned  a  change  of  weather  in  the  skies. 
The  western  borders  were  with  crimson  spread, 
The  moon  descending  looked  all  flaming  red; 
She  thought  good  manners  bound  her  to  invite 
The  stranger  dame  to  be  her  guest  that  night. 
'Tis  true,  coarse  diet,  and  a  short  repast, 
(She  said,)  were  weak  inducements  to  the  taste 
Of  one  so  nicely  bred,  and  so  unused  to  fast; 
But  what  plain  fare  her  cottage  could  afford, 


266         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

A  hearty  welcome  at  a  homely  board, 
Was  freely  hers;  and,  to  supply  the  rest, 
An  honest  meaning,  and  an  open  breast. 

No  portion  of  the  poem  is  more  charged  with  irony; 
almost  every  line  here  fires  a  political  shot.  At  the 
same  time  Dryden  has  capitulated  to  the  genius  of 
story-telling.  He  has  fallen  into  his  most  engaging 
narrative  style  purely  for  the  pleasure  of  doing  so. 
The  two  fables  of  the  swallows  and  the  doves  in  the 
third  part  are  justly  famous.  The  emphasis  there 
is  on  situation  rather  than  on  action,  as  befits  the 
poet's  satiric  and  didactic  purpose;  yet  flourishes  are 
added  from  time  to  time  that  evince  real  relish  in 
the  tale  that  is  being  told.  In  the  fable  of  the  swal- 
lows, for  instance,  there  is  a  triplet  that  Dryden  re- 
membered twelve  years  later  when  he  was  giving  his 
account  of  Iphigenia  asleep: 

Night  came,  but  unattended  with  repose; 
Alone  she  came,  no  sleep  their  eyes  to  close; 
Alone  and  black  she  came;  no  friendly  stars  arose. 

The  great  bulk  of  Dryden's  narrative  verse  con- 
sists of  episodes  translated  or  adapted  from  other 
poets.  The  habit  of  versifying  events  out  of  Ovid 
and  Virgil  was  an  old  one  at  the  Restoration,  but  it 
grew  upon  English  poets  rather  more  rapidly  after 
1660,  leaving  its  deepest  mark  on  the  Miscellanies 
which  Dryden  himself  began  to  edit  in  1684.  Dry- 
den's  first  examples  are  the  Nisus  and  Euryalus  and 
the  Mezentius  and  Lausus  which  he  brought  over 
from  Virgil  for  the  second  Miscellany  in  1685  and 
which  he  incorporated  with  slight  changes  in  the 


THE  NARRATIVE  POET  267 

folio  of  1 697.*  He  was  particularly  fond  of  the  Nisus 
stories,  as  the  poem  on  Oldham  shows  and  as  is  even 
more  clearly  seen  in  a  letter  to  Tonson  concerning 
the  make-up  of  the  volume  in  which  they  first  ap- 
peared: "I  care  not  who  translates  them  besides 
me,  for  let  him  be  friend  or  foe,  I  will  please  myself, 
and  not  give  off  in  consideration  of  any  man."  The 
poems,  both  as  they  were  then  printed  and  as  they 
now  stand,  are  marred  by  hasty  lines  and  Latinisms, 
but  taken  as  wholes  they  are  manly  narratives,  rich, 
passionate,  flushed  with  friendly  warmth  and  rein- 
forced by  strong  intelligence.  They  are  profusely 
colored  throughout  and  in  places  they  are  highly 
spiced  with  alliteration.  They  glorify  a  reckless 
personal  loyalty  and  a  shouting  defiance  of  fate,  the 
qualities  which  Dryden  in  his  less  critical  moments 
delighted  most  to  treat,  the  qualities  which  moved 
Byron  at  nineteen  to  try  his  own  hand  with  Nisus 
and  Euryalus.  The  deaths  of  Nisus  and  his  friend 
in  Dryden  are  brutish  but  effective.  Enjambement 
is  used  to  smooth  transitions,  as  here: 

Thus  armed  they  went.    The  noble  Trojans  wait 
Their  issuing  forth,  and  follow  to  the  gate 
With  prayers  and  vows.    Above  the  rest  appears 
Ascanius,  manly  far  beyond  his  years. 

But  at  the  more  critical  stages  of  the  action  and  in 
the  speeches  the  couplets  are  conventionally  de- 
finitive. Mezentius  addresses  his  horse  before  he 
mounts  to  ride  to  his  death: 

1  See  his  jEneis,,  V,  373-475  and  IX,  221-600,  for  the  first  episode, 
and  X,  1071-1313  for  the  second. 


268         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

O  Rhoebus,  we  have  lived  too  long  for  me, 

(If  life  and  long  were  terms  that  could  agree). 

This  day  thou  either  shalt  bring  back  the  head 

And  bloody  trophies  of  the  Trojan  dead; 

This  day  thou  either  shalt  revenge  my  woe, 

For  murdered  Lausus,  on  his  cruel  foe; 

Or,  if  inexorable  fate  deny 

Our  conquest,  with  thy  conquered  master  die. 

For,  after  such  a  lord,  I  rest  secure, 

Thou  wilt  no  foreign  reins,  or  Trojan  load  endure. 

The  episodes  from  Ovid  and  Homer  in  the  third 
Miscellany  of  1693  are  not  remarkable,  in  spite  of 
Dryden's  statement  in  the  preface  that  those  from 
Ovid  "appear  to  me  the  best  of  all  my  endeavours 
in  this  kind.  Perhaps  this  poet  is  more  easy  to  be 
translated  than  some  others  whom  I  have  lately  at- 
tempted; perhaps,  too,  he  was  more  according  to  my 
genius.  ...  I  have  attempted  to  restore  Ovid  to 
his  native  sweetness,  easiness,  and  smoothness;  and 
to  give  my  poetry  a  kind  of  cadence,  and,  as  we  call 
it,  a  run  of  verse,  as  like  the  original,  as  the  English 
can  come  up  to  the  Latin."  The  first  book  of  the 
Metamorphoses  as  here  given  is  swift  and  smooth, 
and  the  other  pieces  are  picturesque  and  copious, 
but  it  must  always  be  clear  to  anyone  that  Dryden 
was  more  at  home  among  the  warriors  of  the  JEneid. 
Ovid  was  attractive  mainly  because  of  his  enamelled 
extra vagrance;  he  wrote  with  license  yet  with  ele- 
gance; poetically  he  was  a  finished  rogue. 

Dryden's  career  ended  as  it  began,  in  a  triumph 
of  the  spirit.  His  resolution  at  twenty-three  to  pro- 
ceed to  London  and  become  a  poet  is  matched  only 


THE  NARRATIVE  POET  269 

by  the  fire  and  the  perseverance  which  drove  him 
at  the  end  of  his  life  through  pain  and  sickness  to 
the  conclusion  of  his  Fables.  An  old  man  divorced 
from  the  Court  and  vilely  lampooned  by  Whigs  each 
year  that  he  lived,  he  might  have  raged  or  snarled 
or  complained  or  degenerated.  He  settled  down 
instead  to  the  telling  of  excellent  stories.  "The 
tattling  quality  of  age,"  he  had  written  in  the  Dis- 
course oj  Satire,  "as  Sir  William  Davenant  says,  is 
always  narrative."  He  kept  his  gracious  grand- 
niece,  Mrs.  Steward  of  Cotterstock  Hall,  well  in- 
formed concerning  the  progress  of  his  volume.  "Be- 
tween my  intervals  of  physic,"  he  wrote  to  her  on 
Candlemas-Day,  1698,  "I  am  still  drudging  on:  al- 
ways a  poet,  and  never  a  good  one.  I  pass  my  time 
sometimes  with  Ovid,  and  sometimes  with  our  old 
English  poet  Chaucer;  translating  such  stories  as 
best  please  my  fancy;  and  intend  besides  them  to  add 
somewhat  of  my  own;  so  that  it  is  not  impossible, 
but  ere  the  summer  be  passed,  I  may  come  down 
to  you  with  a  volume  in  my  hand,  like  a  dog  out  of 
the  water,  with  a  duck  in  his  mouth."  On  the  fourth 
of  March  he  continued:  "I  am  still  drudging  at  a 
book  of  Miscellanies,  which  I  hope  will  be  well 
enough;  if  otherwise,  threescore  and  seven  may  be 
pardoned."  Twenty  days  before  his  death,  on  the 
eleventh  of  April,  1700,  he  could  write  her  with  some 
pride:  "The  ladies  of  the  town  .  .  .  are  all  of  your 
opinion,  and  like  my  last  book  of  Poems  better  than 
anything  they  have  formerly  seen  of  mine."  The 
work  was  certainly  drudgery,  and  it  was  done  as 
rapidly  as  possible  for  money;  but  it  is  clear  that 


270         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Dryden  grew  fonder  of  his  occupation  as  he  pro- 
ceeded. The  golden  Preface  describes  his  delighted 
progress  from  Homer  to  Ovid,  from  Ovid  to  Chaucer, 
and  from  Chaucer  to  Boccaccio,  the  volume  con- 
stantly swelling  in  his  hands;  "I  have  built  a  house," 
he  concludes,  "where  I  intended  but  a  lodge."  If  he 
had  thought  of  the  lodge  as  a  green  retreat  for  a 
fading  muse,  he  found  the  house  a  bustling  hall 
built  for  the  entertainment  of  his  ripest  powers; 
there  had  been  no  fading.  At  no  time  after  the 
Revolution  did  he  need  to  say  like  Virgil's  Mceris: 

Cares  and  time 

Change  all  things,  and  untune  my  soul  to  rhyme. 
I  could  have  once  sung  down  a  summer's  sun, 
But  now  the  chime  of  poetry  is  done. 
My  voice  grows  hoarse. 

The  chime  of  Dryden 's  verse  was  never  done. 

There  is  no  fine  bloom  of  romance  about  the 
Fables.  The  generation  for  which  they  were  pro- 
duced was  not  possessed  of  tender  ideals;  Spenser's 
vision  of  the  virtues  of  man  was  as  remote  as  Words- 
worth's vision  of  the  quiet  powers  of  Nature.  "Dry- 
den had  neither  a  tender  heart,  nor  a  lofty  sense  of 
moral  dignity,"  wrote  Wordsworth  to  Scott  in  1805. 
"Whenever  his  language  is  poetically  impassioned, 
it  is  mostly  upon  unpleasing  subjects,  such  as  the 
follies,  vices,  and  crimes  of  classes  of  men,  or  of 
individuals."  The  Fables,  with  certain  notable  ex- 
ceptions, catered  to  a  jaded  taste  that  craved  the 
strong  meat  of  romance,  incest,  murder,  flowing 
blood,  cruel  and  sensual  unrealities,  or  else  the  biting 


THE  NARRATIVE  POET  271 

acid  of  satire.  Dryden's  search  for  materials  was 
far  and  wide.  He  did  not  confine  himself  to  what 
Cowley  in  1656  had  contemptuously  dismissed  as 
"the  obsolete  threadbare  tales  of  Thebes  and  Troy." 
He  plundered  medieval  as  well  as  ancient  story;  he 
went  to  the  greatest  tellers  of  tales  wherever  they 
were,  whether  they  were  Greek,  Roman,  Italian,  or 
English.  In  a  different  sense  from  Walt  Whitman's 
he  decided : 

Come,  Muse,  migrate  from  Greece  and  Ionia. 

Cross  out,  please,  those  immensely  overpaid  accounts; 

That  matter  of  Troy  and  Achilles'  wrath,  and  ./Eneas', 

Odysseus'  wanderings.  .  .  . 
For  know  a  better,  fresher,  busier  sphere,  a  wider,  untried 

domain  awaits  and  demands  you. 

Whatever  the  reason,  Homer  and  Ovid  do  not 
show  quite  so  well  in  the  Fables  as  do  Chaucer  and 
Boccaccio.  "That  matter  of  Troy"  and  those  "con- 
fused antiquated  dreams  of  senseless  .  .  .  Meta- 
morphoses," to  quote  Cowley  once  again,  only 
occasionally  here  ring  familiar  and  true.  The  First 
Book  of  Homer's  I  lias,  in  translating  which  Dryden 
did  not  use  the  original  Greek,  is  striking  only  in 
its  passages  of  invocation  and  abuse.  The  closing 
scene  with  Vulcan  is  grandiosely  convivial: 

At  Vulcan's  homely  mirth  his  mother  smiled, 
And  smiling  took  the  cup  the  clown  had  filled. 
The  reconciler  bowl  went  round  the  board, 
Which,  emptied,  the  rude  skinker  still  restored. 
Loud  fits  of  laughter  seized  the  guests,  to  see 
The  limping  god  so  deft  at  his  new  ministry. 


272         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

The  feast  continued  till  declining  light; 

They  drank,  they  laughed,  they  loved,  and  then 

'twas  night. 

Nor  wanted  tuneful  harp,  nor  vocal  choir; 
The  muses  sung;  Apollo  touched  the  lyre. 
Drunken  at  last,  and  drowsy  they  depart, 
Each  to  his  house,  adorned  with  labored  art 
Of  the  lame  architect. 

Pope's  rendering  of  the  same  scene  is  not  half  so 
lively;  the  laughter  of  his  gods  is  imitation  laughter, 
this  is  real.  It  is  thinkable  that  a  complete  Iliad 
by  the  author  of  these  lines  would  be,  even  now, 
the  most  Homeric  thing  in  English.  From  Homer, 
says  Dryden,  "I  proceeded  to  the  translation  of  the 
Twelfth  Book  of  Ovid's  Metamorphoses,  because  it 
contains,  among  other  things,  the  causes,  the  begin- 
ning, and  ending,  of  the  Trojan  war.  Here  I  ought 
in  reason  to  have  stopped."  But  he  went  on,  so  that 
almost  a  third  of  the  Fables  derives  from  the  Meta- 
morphoses. The  Meleager  and  Atalanta  from  the 
eighth  book  is  a  hectic  recital  of  a  bloody  boar-hunt 
and  a  triple  murder.  Ovid  has  been  lavish  and 
audacious  enough,  but  Dryden  goes  him  one  better; 
he  is  facetious  when  Ovid  is  sober,  and  he  plays  with 
words  when  Ovid  speaks  plainly.  Ovid's  Althea, 
when  the  corpses  of  her  brothers  are  brought  in, 
cries  out  merely  and  goes  into  mourning.  In  Dryden 
it  is  written : 

Pale  at  the  sudden  sight,  she  changed  her  cheer, 
And  with  her  cheer  her  robes. 

Ovid's   Meleager,   as   soon  as  his  image  has  been 


THE  NARRATIVE  POET  273 

thrown  to  the  fire  by  his  mother,  writhes  and  laments 
the  bloodless  death  that  he  must  die.  Dryden  says: 

Just  then  the  hero  cast  a  doleful  cry, 
And  in  those  absent  flames  began  to  fry; 
The  blind  contagion  raged  within  his  veins, 
But  he  with  manly  patience  bore  his  pains; 
He  feared  not  fate,  but  only  grieved  to  die 
Without  an  honest  wound,  and  by  a  death  so  dry. 

Dryden  has  a  pretty  "turn"  where  Ovid  has  none; 
it  occurs  in  the  account  of  the  grief  of  the  sisters  of 
the  Calydonian  hero : 

Had  I  a  hundred  tongues,  a  wit  so  large 

As  could  their  hundred  offices  discharge; 

Had  Phoebus  all  his  Helicon  bestowed, 

In  all  the  streams  inspiring  all  the  god; 

Those  tongues,  that  wit,  those  streams,  that  god  in  vain 

Would  offer  to  describe  his  sisters'  pain. 

The  Baucis  and  Philemon  from  the  eighth  book  is 
by  far  the  best  of  the  Ovidian  pieces.  Dryden 
praises  this  "good-natured  story"  in  the  Preface. 
"I  see  Baucis  and  Philemon  as  perfectly  before  me," 
he  declares,  "as  if  some  ancient  painter  had  drawn 
them."  It  had  always  pleased  him  to  write  of  homely 
hospitality  and  rustic  honesty.  In  the  prologue  to 
All  for  Love  he  had  remarked  how  those  in  high 
places  liked  at  times  to  descend  among  the  low  and 

Drink  hearty  draughts  of  ale  from  plain  brown  bowls, 
And  snatch  the  homely  rasher  from  the  coals. 

The  household  cheer  of  his  Hind  had  been  of  this 


274         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

sort,  as  has  been  seen.  Some  of  his  most  genial 
letters  were  those  he  wrote  in  old  age  to  Mrs.  Steward 
thanking  her  for  gifts  of  venison  and  marrow  pud- 
ding. "As  for  the  rarities  you  promise,"  he  protested 
on  one  occasion,  "if  beggars  might  be  choosers,  a 
part  of  a  chine  of  honest  bacon  would  please  my 
appetite  more  than  all  the  marrow  puddings;  for 
I  like  them  better  plain;  having  a  very  vulgar 
stomach."  He  revelled  among  Ovid's  details  and 
added  others  of  his  own,  stirring  all  in  to  make  his 
poem  rich.  Jove  and  Hermes  fared  like  this: 

High  o'er  the  hearth  a  chine  of  bacon  hung; 

Good  old  Philemon  seized  it  with  a  prong, 

And  from  the  sooty  rafter  drew  it  down; 

Then  cut  a  slice,  but  scarce  enough  for  one; 

Yet  a  large  portion  of  a  little  store, 

Which  for  their  sakes  alone  he  wished  were  more; 

This  in  the  pot  he  plunged  without  delay, 

To  tame  the  flesh  and  drain  the  salt  away. 

The  time  between,  before  the  fire  they  sat, 

And  shortened  the  delay  with  pleasing  chat.  .  .  . 

Pallas  began  the  feast,  where  first  were  seen 

The  party-colored  olive,  black  and  green; 

Autumnal  cornels  next  in  order  served, 

In  lees  of  wine  well  pickled  and  preserved; 

A  garden  salad  was  the  third  supply, 

Of  endive,  radishes,  and  succory; 

Then  curds  and  cream,  the  flower  of  country  fare, 

And  new-laid  eggs,  which  Baucis'  busy  care 

Turned  by  a  gentle  fire  and  roasted  rare.  .  .  . 

The  wine  itself  was  suiting  to  the  rest, 

Still  working  in  the  must,  and  lately  pressed. 

The  second  course  succeeds  like  that  before; 


THE  NARRATIVE  POET  275 

Plums,  apples,  nuts,  and,  of  their  wintry  store, 
Dry  figs  and  grapes,  and  wrinkled  dates  were  set 
In  canisters. 

There  is  no  padding  here,  no  clutter  of  circumlocu- 
tions. Dryden  feels  at  home,  which  means  that  he 
is  rapid,  vivid,  and  concrete,  and  therefore  for  once 
a  good  story-teller.  Pygmalion  and  the^  Statue,  from 
the  tenth  book,  had  a  good  Restoration  theme  which 
lent  itself  to  vulgarization;  it  was  so  treated  by 
Dryden,  who  could  rarely  be  trusted  with  lovers. 
The  Cinyras  and  Myrrha,  from  the  same  book,  a 
tale  of  incest,  was  likewise  handled  without  restraint. 
The  Ceyx  and  Alcyone,  from  the  eleventh  book,  the 
history  of  a  shipwreck,  a  drowning,  and  a  body 
washed  ashore,  is  extremely  fantastic  in  Ovid;  in 
Dryden,  who  now  is  plainly  tired,  it  is  grotesque  and 
literal.  Ovid's  two  lines  on  King  Ceyx  in  the  water, 

Dum  natet,  absentem,  quotiens  sinit  hiscere  fluctus, 
Nominat  Alcyonen  ipsisque  inmurmurat  undis, 

become  four  in  the  Fables: 

As  oft  as  he  can  catch  a  gulp  of  air, 
And  peep  above  the  seas,  he  names  the  fair; 
And  even  when  plunged  beneath,  on  her  he  raves, 
Murmuring  Alcyone  below  the  waves. 

The  twelfth  book,  which  is  "wholly  translated,"  re- 
counts the  famous  fight  in  the  cave,  Dryden  being 
fully  as  graphic  and  gory  as  the  original.  The 
Speeches  of  Ajax  and  Ulysses,  from  the  thirteenth 
book,  find  him  once  more  in  his  element.  A  forensic 
contest  is  on  between  brain  and  brawn,  and  the 


276         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

translator  of  Lucretius  is  in  his  best  argumentative 
trim.  The  verse  is  strong,  intelligent  and  swift. 
Ulysses  concludes,  speaking  to  Ajax: 

Brawn  without  brain  is  thine;  my  prudent  care 
Foresees,  provides,  administers  the  war. 
Thy  province  is  to  fight;  but  when  shall  be 
The  time  to  fight,  the  king  consults  with  me. 
No  dram  of  judgment  with  thy  force  is  joined. 
Thy  body  is  of  profit,  and  my  mind. 
By  how  much  more  the  ship  her  safety  owes 
To  him  who  steers,  than  him  that  only  rows; 
By  how  much  more  the  captain  merits  praise 
Than  he  who  fights,  and  fighting  but  obeys; 
By  so  much  greater  is  my  worth  than  thine, 
Who  canst  but  execute  what  I  design. 

When  Dryden  in  the  preface  to  his  Fables  elabo- 
rately declared  the  superiority  of  Chaucer  to  Ovid 
in  sanity  and  truth  to  nature  he  revived  the  sunken 
reputation  of  one  of  the  greatest  of  English  poets 
much  as  in  the  Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy  he  had  es- 
tablished for  all  Augustan  generations  the  tone  of 
evaluation  of  the  greatest,  and  he  reared  himself 
head  and  shoulders  above  contemporary  levels  of 
criticism.  Perhaps  the  most  saving  thing  about  him 
as  a  poet  is  the  fact  that  he  championed  and  gave 
vogue  to  the  Canterbury  Tales.  The  reputation  of 
Chaucer  was  lower  in  the  seventeenth  century  than 
it  had  been  before  or  has  been  since.  No  edition 
of  his  works  was  issued  between  the  two  reprints  of 
Speght  in  1602  and  1687.  He  was  seldom  read, 
though  he  was  often  mentioned  as  a  difficult  old 
author  who  had  a  remarkable  but  obscure  vein  of 


THE  NARRATIVE  POET  277 

gayety.  Spenser's  tribute  was  forgotten,  and  Mil- 
ton's went  unobserved.  "Mr.  Cowley  despised 
him,"  according  to  Dryden,  and  Addison,  in  the 
Account  of  the  Best  Known  English  Poets  which  he 
contributed  to  the  fourth  Miscellany  in  1694,  pro- 
nounced what  seemed  a  final  benediction  over  the 
skeleton  of  his  fame: 

In  vain  he  jests  in  his  unpolished  strain 
And  tries  to  make  his  readers  laugh  in  vain.  .  .  . 
But  now  the  mystic  tale  that  pleased  of  yore 
Can  charm  an  understanding  age  no  more. 

Now  Dryden,  in  an  age  when  "nature"  was  more 
talked  about  than  explored,  took  pains  to  deny  that 
Chaucer  was  "a  dry,  old-fashioned  wit,  not  worth 
reviving,"  proving  rather  that  he  had  "followed 
Nature  everywhere,"  and  had  written  for  all  time. 
"We  have  our  forefathers  and  great-grand-dames  all 
before  us,  as  they  were  in  Chaucer's  days;  their  gen- 
eral characters  are  still  remaining  in  mankind,  and 
even  in  England,  though  they  are  called  by  other 
names  ...  for  mankind  is  ever  the  same,  and  noth- 
ing lost  out  of  Nature,  though  everything  is  altered." 
The  humanity  of  Chaucer  had  its  effect  on  the 
Fables,  where  The  Cock  and  the  Fox,  for  instance,  is 
bubbling  and  droll  like  nothing  else  in  Dryden.  It 
is  keenly  a  pleasure  to  behold  the  old  poet  who  has 
dealt  so  exclusively  throughout  his  career  in  the 
styles  and  accidents  of  utterance  expand  and  ripen 
under  the  influence  of  a  richly  human  personality. 
"In  sum,  I  seriously  protest,"  he  concluded,  "that 
no  man  ever  had,  or  can  have,  a  greater  veneration 


278         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

for  Chaucer  than  myself.  I  have  translated  some 
part  of  his  works,  only  that  I  might  perpetuate  his 
memory,  or  at  least  refresh  it,  amongst  my  country- 
men." 

In  modernizing  Chaucer  Dryden  had  to  overcome 
two  current  prejudices  concerning  his  language.    On 
the  one  hand  there  was  a  majority  who  considered 
that  language  too  stale  to  be  worth  restoring;  on 
the  other  there  was  a  minority  consisting  of  certain 
"old  Saxon  friends"  like  the  late  Earl  of  Leicester 
who  supposed,  according  to  Dryden,  "that  it  is  little 
less  than  profanation  and  sacrilege  to  alter  it.    They 
are  farther  of  opinion,  that  somewhat  of  his  good 
sense  will  suffer  in  this  transfusion,  and  much  of  the 
beauty  of  his  thoughts  will  infallibly  be  lost,  which 
appear  with  more  grace  in  the  old  habit."    His  an- 
swer to  the  first  was  that  now  they  might  see  for 
themselves  whether  Chaucer  was  worth   knowing, 
and  his  answer  to  the  second  was  that  he  worked  in 
the  interest  not  of  scholars  but  of  those  "who  under- 
stand sense  and  poetry  as  well  as  they,  when  that 
poetry  and  sense  is  put  into  words  which  they  under- 
stand."   A  more  serious  problem  that  had  to  be  met 
in  the  process  of  modernization  was  the  problem  of 
versification.     Dryden's  dilemma  at  this  point  has 
not   been    sufficiently   appreciated.      He    has    been 
smiled  at,  to  begin  with,  for  his  ignorance  of  Chau- 
cer's metrical  scheme;  and  by  those  who  do  not  mind 
that,  he  has  been  condemned  for  his  obliteration  of 
Chaucer's  exquisite  metrical  personality.     His   ig- 
norance, which  was  real,  he  shared  with  most  of  his 
contemporaries;  and  he  cannot  be  altogether  blamed 


THE  NARRATIVE  POET  279 

when  it  is  considered  that  the  text  which  he  used  was 
so  wretchedly  mangled  that  no  uniform  meter 
emerged.  It  was  literally  true  for  him  that  not  all 
lines  had  the  full  ten  syllables;  Speght  had  not 
guarded  his  final  ^'s  as  must  a  modern  editor.  The 
passage  in  which  Dryden  surveys  the  field  is  too  im- 
portant not  to  be  quoted:  "The  verse  of  Chaucer,  I 
confess,  is  not  harmonious  to  us;  .  .  .  they  who 
lived  with  him,  and  some  time  after  him,  thought  it 
musical;  and  it  continues  so,  even  in  our  judgment, 
if  compared  with  the  numbers  of  Lidgate  and  Gower, 
his  contemporaries:  there  is  the  rude  sweetness  of  a 
Scotch  tune  in  it,  which  is  natural  and  pleasing, 
though  not  perfect.  'Tis  true,  I  cannot  go  so  far 
as  he  who  published  the  last  edition  of  him;  for  he 
would  make  us  believe  the  fault  is  in  our  ears,  and 
that  there  were  really  ten  syllables  in  a  verse  where 
we  find  but  nine :  but  this  opinion  is  not  worth  con- 
futing; 'tis  so  gross  and  obvious  an  error,  that  com- 
mon sense  (which  is  a  rule  in  everything  but  matters 
of  Faith  and  Revelation)  must  convince  the  reader, 
that  equality  of  numbers,  in  every  verse  which  we 
call  heroic,  was  either  not  known,  or  not  always 
practiced,  in  Chaucer's  age.  It  were  an  easy  matter 
to  produce  some  thousands  of  his  verses,  which  are 
lame  for  want  of  half  a  foot,  and  sometimes  a  whole 
one,  and  which  no  pronunciation  can  make  other- 
wise." But  even  if  Dryden  had  known  all  that  was 
to  be  known  about  the  verse  of  Chaucer,  it  still 
would  have  been  impossible  for  him,  as  it  must  be 
always  for  anyone,  to  modernize  that  verse  and  pre- 
serve its  flavor.  To  use  Dryden's  own  word,  its 


280        THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

most  precious  qualities  "evaporate"  when  exposed 
to  another  air.  The  crux  is  in  the  weak  final  sylla- 
bles, which  have  a  caressing  sound  never  heard  in 
the  necessarily  brisker  poetry  of  modern  times. 
Since  it  seemed  especially  important  in  Dryden's 
day  to  throw  the  full  weight  of  each  line  into  the 
last  syllable  or  the  last  word,  and  since  Dryden 
himself  had  a  dislike  for  feminine  rhymes  and  in- 
decisive endings,  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  that  he 
sharpened  and  hardened  his  fourteenth-century 
master. 

"I  have  not  tied  myself  to  a  literal  translation," 
he  says  in  the  Preface:  "but  have  often  omitted  what 
I  judged  unnecessary,  or  not  of  dignity  enough  to 
appear  in  the  company  of  better  thoughts.  I  have 
presumed  further,  in  some  places,  and  added  some- 
what of  my  own  where  I  thought  my  author  was 
deficient,  and  had  not  given  his  thoughts  their  true 
lustre,  for  want  of  words  in  the  beginning  of  our 
language."  That  is  to  say,  his  aim  has  been  to 
round  out  Chaucer  and  give  him  an  even,  enamelled 
surface;  he  has  wished  to  remove  all  traces  of  the 
Gothic.  He  has  had  in  mind  a  kind  of  fourth  "unity," 
the  unity  of  effect,  to  secure  which  it  has  been  nec- 
essary to  employ  different  means  in  different  poems. 

In  Palamon  and  Arcite  he  has  applied  the  seven- 
teenth-century heroic  formulas  to  Chaucer's  Knight's 
Tale,  which  he  says  he  prefers  "far  above  all  his 
other  stories"  because  of  its  epic  possibilities.  The 
result  is  a  sometimes  stilted  poem,  one  of  the  least 
interesting  for  its  length  in  the  Fables.  Surrendering 
to  the  Restoration  heroic  tradition,  Dryden  has  drawn 


THE  NARRATIVE  POET  281 

the  sting  of  Chaucer's  tender  colloquialism  and  in- 
jected with  a  blunt  needle  the  false  dignity  of  Al- 
manzor  and  Aureng-Zebe.  Neither  the  jovial  satire 
nor  the  purple  melodrama  of  the  other  tales  is  here. 
Epithets,  circumlocutions,  Latinisms,  grave  con- 
ceits, and  standard  allusions  are  run  profusely  in  to 
thicken  but  not  ennoble  the  original  texture.  The 
verse  is  uniform  and  handsome,  but  the  psychology 
is  almost  everywhere  gross.  For  Chaucer's  lines, 

The  quene  anon,  for  verray  wommanhede, 
Gan  for  to  wepe,  and  so  did  Emeleye, 
And  alle  the  ladies  in  the  companye, 

Dryden  has  substituted: 

The  queen,  above  the  rest,  by  nature  good, 
(The  pattern  formed  of  perfect  womanhood,) 
For  tender  pity  wept:  when  she  began, 
Through  the  bright  choir  the  infectious  virtue  ran. 
All  dropped  their  tears,  even  the  contended  maid. 

And  Chaucer's  simile, 

As  wilde  bores  gonne  they  to  smyte, 
That  frothen  whyte  as  foom  for  ire  wood, 

becomes : 

Or,  as  two  boars  whom  love  to  battle  draws, 
With  rising  bristles,  and  with  frothy  jaws, 
Their  adverse  breasts  with  tusks  oblique  they  wound; 
With  grunts  and  groans  the  forest  rings  around. 

The  poem  is  partially  redeemed  on  one  side  by  the 
regal  "characters"  of  Lycurgus  and  Emetrius,  the 
prayers  of  Palamon,  Emily,  and  Arcite  to  Venus, 


282         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Cynthia,  and  Mars,  the  splendid  settings  which  are 
given  for  martial  actions,  and  on  the  other  side  by 
occasional  couplets  in  which  Dryden's  mind  has 
slashed  with  a  shining  malice  through  the  tissue  of 
knightly  palaver.  As  usual,  his  cynicism  is  not  ugly, 
not  smart.  He  never  looks  greedily  out  of  the  corner 
of  his  eye  to  see  how  you  take  it;  it  is  too  native  with 
him  for  him  to  be  concerned  about  that,  and  he  him- 
self is  too  humane.  At  the  end  of  ^geus'  consola- 
tory speech  on  the  death  of  Arcite,  Dryden,  not 
Chaucer,  observes  somewhat  enigmatically: 

With  words  like  these  the  crowd  was  satisfied, 
And  so  they  would  have  been,  had  Theseus  died. 

Both  poets  like  to  describe  groups  of  men  conversing; 
but  when  Chaucer  was  only  amused,  Dryden  be- 
came contemptuous.  Chaucer's  delicious  account 
in  the  Squire's  tale  of  the  loquacious  courtiers  who 
gathered  around  the  steed  of  brass  that  stood  before 
the  throne  of  Cambinskan  and  speculated  upon  its 
origin  is  perhaps  matched  here  in  the  Knight's  Tale 
by  a  few  lines  hitting  off  the  throng  that  forecast 
the  outcome  of  to-morrow's  tournament: 

The  paleys  ful  of  peples  up  and  doun, 
Heer  three,  ther  ten,  holding  hir  questioun, 
Divyninge  of  thise  Theban  knightes  two. 
Somme  seyden  thus,  somme  seyde  it  shal  be  so; 
Somme  helden  with  him  with  the  blake  berd, 
Somme  with  the  balled,  somme  with  the  thikke-berd; 
Somme  seyde,  he  looked  grim  and  he  wolde  fighte; 
He  hath  a  sparth  of  twenty  pound  of  wighte. 


THE  NARRATIVE  POET  283 

Thus  was  the  halle  ful  of  divyninge, 
Longe  after  that  the  sonne  gan  to  springe. 

Dryden   is   more   graphic   in   this   case,    and   more 
caustic: 

In  knots  they  stand,  or  in  a  rank  they  walk, 
Serious  in  aspect,  earnest  in  their  talk; 
Factious,  and  favoring  this  or  t'other  side, 
As  their  strong  fancies  and  weak  reason  guide. 
Their  wagers  back  their  wishes;  numbers  hold 
With  the  fair  freckled  king,  and  beard  of  gold; 
So  vigorous  are  his  eyes,  such  rays  they  cast, 
So  prominent  his  eagle's  beak  is  placed. 
But  most  their  looks  on  the  black  monarch  bend, 
His  rising  muscles  and  his  brawn  commend; 
His  double-biting  ax,  and  beamy  spear, 
Each  asking  a  gigantic  force  to  rear. 
All  spoke  as  partial  favor  moved  the  mind; 
And,  safe  themselves,  at  others'  cost  divined. 

The  Cock  and  the  Fox  is  another  story;  it  is  one  of 
the  best  and  most  original  of  the  Fables.  It  must  be 
sheer  affectation  to  insist  that  Chaucer's  Nun 
Priest's  Tale  has  greatly  suffered  in  the  hands  of 
Dryden.  Chaucer's  poem  is  surpassingly  human, 
concrete,  and  sly;  but  Dryden 's  is  no  less  so,  though 
its  pitch  is  somewhat  altered.  The  opening  account 
of  the  poor  old  widow  in  her  cottage  and  of  the 
amorous  Chanticleer  among  his  dames  is  superior 
comedy;  Dryden  has  tactfully  elaborated  such 
facetious  hints  as  are  given  from  time  to  time  by  the 
original.  The  disputation  between  Dane  Partlet  and 
the  Cock  on  the  subject  of  dreams  offers  an  opportu- 


284         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

nity  which  is  both  welcome  and  improved.     Parte- 
lote  's  simple  gibe, 

I  sette  not  a  straw  by  thy  dreminges, 
For  swevenes  been  but  vanitees  and  japes. 
Men  dreme  al-day  of  owles  or  of  apes, 
And  eke  of  many  a  mase  therewithal; 
Men  dreme  of  thing  that  nevere  was  ne  shal, 

becomes  in  Partlet's  mouth  a  piece  of  Lucretian 
exposition : 

Dreams  are  but  interludes  which  fancy  makes; 
When  monarch  Reason  sleeps,  this  mimic  wakes; 
Compounds  a  medley  of  disjointed  things, 
A  court  of  cobblers,  and  a  mob  of  kings. 
Light  fumes  are  merry,  grosser  fumes  are  sad; 
Both  are  the  reasonable  soul  run  mad: 
And  many  monstrous  forms  in  sleep  we  see, 
That  neither  were,  nor  are,  nor  e'er  can  be. 
Sometimes  forgotten  things  long  cast  behind 
Rush  forward  in  the  brain,  and  come  to  mind. 
The  muse's  legends  are  for  truth  received, 
And  the  man  dreams  but  what  the  boy  believed. 
Sometimes  we  but  rehearse  a  former  play; 
The  night  restores  our  actions  done  by  day, 
As  hounds  in  sleep  will  open  for  their  prey. 
In  short  the  farce  of  dreams  is  of  a  piece, 
Chimeras  all. 

The  episode  of  the  brother  murdered  at  the  inn  is 
excellently  and  swiftly  told.  The  digression  on 
freewill  gives  Diyden  a  ratiocinative  cue  which  he 
takes  half  in  the  spirit  of  Religio  Laid  and  half  in 
the  spirit  of  the  Nun  Priest's  Tale  itself. 


THE  NARRATIVE  POET  285 

The  Flower  and  the  Leaf  and  The  Wife  of  Bath, 
her  Tale  are  extraordinary  in  Dryden  for  their 
luxuriant,  spirited  representation  of  fairy  worlds. 
The  Flower  and  the  Leaf,  a  poem  not  by  Chaucer, 
is  a  singularly  pure  and  magical  piece  of  pageantry 
in  rhyme-royal.  Dryden  has  flushed  and  accelerated 
it;  its  wheels  have  caught  fire,  and  glowing  masses 
of  fresh  detail  are  swept  into  the  race.  The  splendor 
is  mostly  genuine;  few  of  Dryden 's  descriptions  are 
less  prolix.  The  genius  of  Spenser  has  rushed  to 
reinforce  the  old  Augustan  in  this  couplet  on  the 
nightingale: 

So  sweet,  so  shrill,  so  variously  she  sung, 
That  the  grove  echoed,  and  the  valleys  rung. 

And  in  the  passage  on  the  jousting  knights  Dryden 
has  remembered  the  metrical  pattern  which  he  used 
some  years  before  to  describe  the  Trojan  boys  as 
they  wheeled  and  met  in  warlike  play  on  the  plains 
of  Sicily:  l 

Thus  marching  to  the  trumpets'  lofty  sound, 
Drawn  in  two  lines  adverse  they  wheeled  around, 
And  in  the  middle  meadow  took  their  ground. 
Among  themselves  the  turney  they  divide, 
In  equal  squadrons  ranged  on  either  side; 
Then  turned  their  horses'  heads,  and  man  to  man, 
And  steed  to  steed  opposed,  the  justs  began, 
They  lightly  set  their  lances  in  the  rest, 
And,  at  the  sign,  against  each  other  pressed; 
They  met;  I  sitting  at  my  ease  beheld 
The  mixed  events,  and  fortunes  of  the  field. 
1  See  page  83 . 


286         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Some  broke  their  spears,  some  tumbled  horse  and  man, 
And  round  the  field  the  lightened  coursers  ran. 
An  hour  and  more,  like  tides,  in  equal  sway 
They  rushed,  and  won  by  turns  and  lost  the  day. 

The  twenty-five  lines  with  which  Chaucer  began 
the  story  of  the  Wife  of  Bath  have  grown  into  forty- 
five  in  the  Fables.  Dryden  has  drawn  upon  Shake- 
speare's Romeo  and  Juliet  and  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream,  Spenser's  Faerie  Queene,  and  Milton's 
L y  Allegro  to  enrich  the  text  of  the  Canterbury  Tales: 

I  speak  of  ancient  times,  for  now  the  swain 

Returning  late  may  pass  the  woods  in  vain, 

And  never  hope  to  see  the  nightly  train; 

In  vain  the  dairy  now  with  mints  is  dressed, 

The  dairymaid  expects  no  fairy  guest, 

To  skim  the  bowls,  and  after  pay  the  feast. 

She  sighs,  and  shakes  her  empty  shoes  in  vain, 

No  silver  penny  to  reward  her  pain; 

For  priests  with  prayers,  and  other  godly  gear, 

Have  made  the  merry  goblins  disappear; 

And  where  they  played  their  merry  pranks  before, 

Have  sprinkled  holy  water  on  the  floor.  .  .  . 

The  maids  and  women  need  no  danger  fear 

To  walk  by  night,  and  sanctity  so  near; 

For  by  some  haycock,  or  some  shady  thorn, 

He  bids  his  beads  both  even  song  and  morn. 

It  so  befell  in  this  King  Arthur's  reign, 

A  lusty  knight  was  pricking  o'er  the  plain.  .  .  . 

An  open  attack  on  the  court  follows  soon  after,  com- 
mencing: 

Then  courts  of  kings  were  held  in  high  renown, 
Ere  made  the  common  brothels  of  the  town. 


THE  NARRATIVE  POET  287 

The  tale  proceeds  without  especial  distinction;  the 
long  speech  at  the  end  by  the  loathly  lady  is  expanded 
from  Chaucer  with  the  aid  of  Lucretius. 

"I  think  his  translations  from  Boccaccio  are  the 
best,  at  least  the  most  poetical,  of  his  poems,"  wrote 
Wordsworth  to  Scott.  They  are  among  the  best 
known  of  the  Fables;  and  they  are  the  most  successful 
of  all  Dryden's  poems  as  narratives.  It  must  be 
admitted  that  in  general  his  stories  in  verse  are 
interesting  not  so  much  for  their  action  as  for  some- 
thing by  the  way:  the  meter,  the  speeches,  the  set- 
tings, the  "characters,"  the  satiric  interpolations, 
the  semblance  of  action.  With  the  exception  per- 
haps of  Palamon  and  Arcite^  none  of  the  pieces  from 
Chaucer  or  Ovid  is  remembered  wholly  for  what 
happens  in  it;  as  the  outer  dome  of  St.  Paul's  cathe- 
dral is  beautiful  but  not  necessary,  so  Dryden's 
narrative  surface  is  animated  but  not  moving.  But 
in  those  from  Boccaccio  the  story  is  everything; 
these  poems  burn  with  narrative  energy.  It  was 
not  for  nothing  that  Dryden  turned  at  last  to  the 
prince  of  story  tellers  and  went  in  frankly  for  melo- 
drama. Sigismonda  and  Guiscardo  is  a  blazing  tale 
of  lovers'  lust  and  murder.  We  see  a  secret  bride 
and  groom  somewhat  brutally  enjoy  each  other  until 
the  father  discovers  them  and  orders  the  husband 
put  to  death.  Wordsworth's  criticism  can  hardly 
be  improved  upon.  "It  is  many  years  since  I  saw 
Boccaccio,"  he  said,  "but  I  remember  that  Sigis- 
munda  is  not  married  by  him  to  Guiscard.  ...  I 
think  Dryden  has  much  injured  the  story  by  the 
marriage,  and  degraded  Sigismunda's  character  by 


288         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

it.  He  has  also,  to  the  best  of  my  remembrance, 
degraded  her  still  more,  by  making  her  love  absolute 
sensuality  and  appetite;  Dryden  had  no  other  notion 
of  the  passion.  With  all  these  defects,  and  they  are 
very  gross  ones,  it  is  a  noble  poem."  The  poem  on 
the  whole  is  swift,  though  there  are  some  wide 
wastes  of  verbiage.  Sigismonda's  address  to  Tan- 
cred  defending  Guiscardo  and  vindicating  virtuous 
poverty  is  sound  oratory  but  it  is  too  long  and  too 
formal.  Dryden  in  the  Preface  invites  comparison 
between  it  and  the  speech  of  the  hag  at  the  end  of 
The  Wife  of  Bath.  Neither  speech  as  it  is  written 
belongs  exactly  where  it  is  placed.  Theodore  and 
Honoria  is  a  haunting  tale  of  terror,  long  popular 
and  the  only  one  of  Dryden 's  narratives  with  an 
atmosphere  that  is  organic  and  sustained.  The 
forests  of  old  Ravenna  cast  a  deep  romantic  shade 
over  the  knights  and  ladies,  real  and  visionary,  who 
play  their  grisly  parts.  Dryden  has  opened  both 
eyes  wide  upon  a  dark  fantastic  world;  and  his  ear 
was  never  fitter.  The  poem  makes  a  rousing 
start: 

Of  all  the  cities  in  Romanian  lands, 
The  chief,  and  most  renowned,  Ravenna  stands, 
Adorned  in  ancient  times  with  arms  and  arts, 
And  rich  inhabitants,  with  generous  hearts. 
But  Theodore  the  brave,  above  the  rest, 
With  gifts  of  fortune  and  of  nature  blest, 
The  foremost  place  for  wealth  and  honour  held, 
And  all  in  feats  of  chivalry  excelled. 

This  noble  youth  to  madness  loved  a  dame, 
Of  high  degree,  Honoria  was  her  name; 


THE  NARRATIVE  POET  289 

Fair  as  the  fairest,  but  of  haughty  mind, 
And  fiercer  than  became  so  soft  a  kind. 

The  setting  for  the  apparition  of  the  hunted  maid 
owes  its  success  to  a  group  of  ominous  cadences 
which  reproduce  the  terror  and  suspense  of  Nature 
herself: 

It  happed  one  morning,  as  his  fancy  led, 

Before  his  usual  hour  he  left  his  bed, 

To  walk  within  a  lonely  lawn,  that  stood 

On  every  side  surrounded  by  the  wood. 

Alone  he  walked,  to  please  his  pensive  mind, 

And  sought  the  deepest  solitude  to  find.  .  .  . 

While  listening  to  the  murmuring  leaves  he  stood, 

More  than  a  mile  immersed  within  the  wood, 

At  once  the  wind  was  laid;  the  whispering  sound 

Was  dumb;  a  rising  earthquake  rocked  the  ground; 

With  deeper  brown  the  grove  was  overspread: 

A  sudden  horror  seized  his  giddy  head, 

And  his  ears  tinkled,  and  his  color  fled. 

Nature  was  in  alarm;  some  danger  nigh 

Seemed  threatened,  though  unseen  to  mortal  eye. 

Unused  to  fear,  he  summoned  all  his  soul, 

And  stood  collected  in  himself,  and  whole; 

Not  long:  for  soon  a  whirlwind  rose  around, 

And  from  afar  he  heard  a  screaming  sound, 

As  of  a  dame  distressed,  who  cried  for  aid, 

And  filled  with  loud  laments  the  secret  shade. 

The  story  whirls  on  without  an  interruption  or  a 
couplet  out  of  place.  The  effect  is  single;  Dryden 
nowhere  stops  merely  to  heap  up  words  or  to  paint 
an  impossible,  unnecessary  scene.  Cymon  and  Iphi- 
genia,  the  last  of  all  the  Fables,  is  less  of  a  piece 


290        THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

than  the  Theodore.  It  is  famous  not  for  its  plot 
but  for  its  by-play.  No  one  remembers  the  last 
two-thirds  of  the  poem;  but  the  first  hundred  and 
fifty-seven  lines  are  classic.  Dryden  has  conceived 
simple  Cymon  and  the  most  desirable  Iphigenia  with 
infinite  zest.  The  hero  is  removed  by  his  father  to  the 
farm: 

Thus  to  the  wilds  the  sturdy  Cymon  went, 

A  squire  among  the  swains,  and  pleased  with  banishment. 

His  corn  and  cattle  were  his  only  care, 

And  his  supreme  delight  a  country  fair. 

It  happened  on  a  summer's  holiday, 
That  to  the  greenwood  shade  he  took  his  way; 
For  Cymon  shunned  the  church,  and  used  not  much  to 

pray. 

His  quarterstaff,  which  he  could  ne'er  forsake, 
Hung  half  before,  and  half  behind  his  back. 
He  trudged  along,  unknowing  what  he  sought, 
And  whistled  as  he  went,  for  want  of  thought. 

He  comes  upon  Iphigenia  asleep  much  as  Thomson 's 
Damon  in  Summer  comes  upon  Musidora,  and  after 
a  spell  of  staring  he  is  inspired  to  analyze  his  first 
love 's  charms : 

Thus  our  man-beast,  advancing  by  degrees, 
First  likes  the  whole,  then  separates  by  degrees, 
On  several  parts  a  several  praise  bestows, 
The  ruby  lips,  the  well-proportioned  nose, 
The  snowy  skin,  the  raven-glossy  hair, 
The  dimpled  cheek,  the  forehead  rising  fair, 
And  even  in  sleep  itself  a  smiling  air. 

This  is  romance,  but  romance  sunned  and   dried 


THE  NARRATIVE  POET  291 

in  the  smiling  mind  of  a  massive  old  satirist.  Here 
in  this  legend  of  two  preposterous  lovers  and  after- 
wards in  the  "character"  of  the  raw  militia  swarm- 
ing on  the  fields  of  Rhodes  are  exhibited  most  of 
the  traits  of  Dryden.  One  will  observe  the  absence 
of  wonder,  and  the  powerful  presence  of  hard,  sub- 
stantial laughter. 


VIII 
REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION 

The  reputation  of  Dryden  as  a  poet  has  not  been 
international.  Where  English  is  not  spoken  his  name 
is  likely  to  be  respected,  but  his  poetry  seldom  is 
read.  A  man  who  has  had  so  little  to  say  to  his 
countrymen  has  had  no  claim  at  all  on  the  ears  of 
foreigners.  It  is  only  a  few  poets  who  can  be  or 
need  be  translated.  Dryden,  in  whom  style  was 
paramount,  and  whose  manner  proved  generally  in- 
communicable even  to  native  successors,  can  hardly 
have  expected  to  appear  to  advantage  in  other  lan- 
guages. Thackeray  asserted  in  his  essay  on  Con- 
greve  and  Addison  that  Dryden  died  "the  marked 
man  of  all  Europe,"  but  that  is  an  exaggeration. 
Naturally  enough,  he  was  heard  more  of  in  France 
than  elsewhere  on  the  continent;  yet  he  was  never 
famous  there.  At  no  time  before  1700  were  the 
French  much  interested  in  England's  belles  lettres; 
it  did  not  much  matter  to  Boileau  whether  Dryden 
or  Blackmore  was  best  among  the  poets  across  the 
Channel.  Boileau,  indeed,  when  told  of  Dryden's 
death  is  said  to  have  affected  never  to  have  heard 
his  name.  Rapin,  on  the  other  hand,  may  have 
learned  English  merely  to  read  him.  At  all  events, 
it  was  not  until  the  next  century,  when  everything 
English  suddenly  became  of  enormous  concern  to 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  293 

Frenchmen,  that  Voltaire  celebrated  and  gave  some 
little  vogue  to  "1'inegal  et  impetueux  Dryden," 
"un  tres-grand  genie,"  as  he  called  him  in  the  dedi- 
cation of  Zaire  in  1736.  He  had  introduced  the 
author  of  Aureng-Zebe  to  the  French  public  in  1734, 
in  his  letter  on  English  tragedy:  "C'est  Dryden 
Poete  du  terns  de  Charles  second,  Auteur  plus  fecond 
que  judicieux,  qui  aurait  une  reputation  sans  me- 
lange, s'il  n'avait  fait  que  la  dixieme  partie  de  ses 
Ouvrages,  et  dont  le  grand  deffaut  est  d'avoir  voulu 
etre  universel."  In  1752,  in  the  thirty-fourth  chap- 
ter of  his  Siecle  de  Louis  XI V,  he  announced  of 
Dryden's  works  that  they  were  "pleins  de  details 
naturels  a  la  fois  et  brillants,  animes,  vigoureux, 
hardis,  passiones,  merite  qu'aucun  ancien  n'a  sur- 
passe."  He  drew  upon  The  Wife  of  Bath  in  1764  for 
the  idea  of  his  tale  in  verse,  Ce  Que  Plait  Aux  Dames. 
Alexander's  Feast  was  always  for  him  a  point  de  re- 
•pere  in  English  poetry.  In  his  article  on  Enthusiasm 
in  the  Dictionary  he  showed  an  excellent  under- 
standing of  the  conventional  English  judgments  upon 
it:  "De  toutes  les  odes  modernes,  celle  ou  il  regne 
le  plus  grand  enthousiasme  qui  ne  s'affaiblit  jamais, 
et  qui  ne  tombe  ni  dans  le  faux  ni  dans  1'ampule, 
est  le  Timothee,  ou  la  fete  d'Alexandre,  par  Dryden; 
elle  est  encore  regardee  en  Angleterre  comme  un  chef- 
d'oeuvre  inimitable,  dont  Pope  n'a  pu  approcher 
quand  il  a  voulu  s'exercer  dans  le  meme  genre. 
Cette  ode  fut  chantee;  et  si  on  avait  eu  un  musicien 
digne  du  poe'te,  ce  serait  le  chef-d'oeuvre  de  la  poesie 
lyrique."  To  M.  de  Chabanon,  who  had  just  pub- 
lished a  translation  of  Pindar  with  an  essay  on  the 


294         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Pindaric  genre^  he  wrote  from  Ferney  on  the  gth  of 
March,  1772:  "Vous  appelez  Cowley  le  Pindare 
anglais  .  .  .  c'etait  un  poete  sans  harmonic.  .  .  . 
Le  vrai  Pindare  est  Dryden,  auteur  de  cette  belle  ode 
intitulee  la  Fete  d'Alexandre,  ou  Alexandre  et  Tim- 
othee.  Cette  ode  .  .  .  passe  en  Angleterre  pour  le 
chef-d'oeuvre  de  la  poesie  la  plus  sublime  et  la  plus 
variee;  et  je  vous  avoue  que,  comme  je  sais  meux 
1'anglais  que  le  grec,  j'aime  cent  fois  mieux  cette  ode 
que  tout  Pindare."  Boswell  told  Johnson  "that  Vol- 
taire, in  a  conversation  with  me,  had  distinguished 
Pope  and  Dryden  thus:  'Pope  drives  a  handsome 
chariot,  with  a  couple  of  neat  trim  nags;  Dryden  a 
coach,  and  six  stately  horses."1  It  will  be  seen  that 
Voltaire  had  not  listened  for  nothing  to  the  wits 
and  savants  of  London.  And  he  must  have  known 
that  he  was  safer  in  extolling  Alexander's  Feast  than 
he  would  have  been  on  any  other  ground.  Dryden's 
last  ode  has  penetrated  where  none  of  the  other 
poems  will  ever  go.  Handel's  music  kept  it  long 
familiar  to  Germans  who  had  no  taste  for  the  other 
lyrics.  Henry  Crabb  Robinson  wrote  in  his  diary 
in  1803,  after  a  visit  to  Voss,  the  German  translator 
of  Homer:  "I  was  quite  unable  to  make  him  see  the 
beauty  of  Dryden's  translations  from  Horace, — such 
as  the  'Ode  on  Fortune."1  A.  W.  Schlegel  was  at 
a  loss  to  understand  what  he  considered  the  inflated 
reputation  at  home  of  the  plays,  the  translations,  and 
the  "political  allegories."  It  is  in  England,  and  inci- 
dentally in  America,  that  one  must  remain  if  he  would 
find  what  fame  the  name  of  Dryden  has  enjoyed. 
"I  loved  Mr.  Dryden,"  said  Congreve  with  a  sim- 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  295 

plicity  that  was  rare  with  him  and  his  generation. 
The  stout  old  poet  with  his  cherry  cheeks,  his  heavy 
eyes,  his  long  grey  hair,  and  his  snuff-soiled  waistcoat 
was  not  in  want  of  affectionate  as  well  as  valuable 
friends  after  the  Revolution.  He  kept  company  not 
only  with  poets,  but  with  important  laymen.  He 
was  a  believer  in  conversation,  though  he  may  not 
have  been  an  adept  himself.  "Great  contemporaries 
whet  and  cultivate  each  other,"  he  wrote  in  1693  in 
the  Discourse  of  Satire.  Back  in  the  time  of  Charles 
he  had  been  intimate  with  the  wits  and  poets  of  the 
court.  "We  have  .  .  .  our  genial  nights,"  he  re- 
minded Sedley  in  the  dedication  of  The  Assignation 
in  1673,  "where  our  discourse  is  neither  too  serious 
nor  too  light,  but  always  pleasant,  and,  for  the  most 
part,  instructive;  the  raillery  neither  too  sharp  upon 
the  present,  nor  too  censorious  on  the  absent;  and 
the  cups  only  such  as  will  raise  the  conversation  of 
the  night,  without  disturbing  the  business  of  the 
morrow."  In  his  last  decade  he  was  welcome  in  the 
houses  of  his  relations,  Mrs.  Steward  of  Cotterstock 
Hall,  near  Oundle,  Northamptonshire,  and  John 
Driden  of  Chesterton,  in  Huntingdonshire,  and  in 
that  of  the  really  noble  Duke  of  Ormonde.  Thomas 
Carte,  who  wrote  a  life  of  the  Duke  in  1736,  said 
that  "once  in  a  quarter  of  a  year  he  used  to  have  the 
Marquis  of  Halifax,  the  earls  of  Mulgrave,  Dorset, 
and  Danby,  Mr.  Dryden,  and  others  of  that  set  of 
men  at  supper,  and  then  they  were  merry  and  drank 
hard."  * 

JJohn  Caryll  of  Lady  Holt,  Sussex,  who  formed  the  amiable  habit 
late  in  the  century  of  inviting  celebrities  to  his  house  and  accompanying 


296         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

His  position  among  the  poets  of  that  decade  is  too 
well  known  to  require  an  elaborate  account.  Pope 
told  Spence  that  "Dryden  employed  his  mornings 
in  writing;  dined,  enfamille;  and  then  went  to  Will's." 
His  coffee-house  dictatorship  has  long  been  prover- 
bial in  English  literary  history;  "the  great  patriarch 
of  Parnassus"  who  ruled  by  the  fire  in  winter  and 
out  on  the  balcony  in  summer  is  the  most  striking 
figure  between  the  blind  Milton  and  the  rolling  Dr. 
Johnson.  His  prologues  and  epilogues,  and  later  his 
satires,  made  him  respected,  feared,  and  sought  as 
a  judge  of  verse.  There  has  come  down  from  about 
1682  a  decision  which  he  wrote  for  an  unknown  com- 
pany concerning  a  disputed  passage  in  Creech's 
Lucretius.  The  dispute  was  as  to  whether  the  pas- 
sage made  sense.  Dryden  reported:  "I  have  con- 

his  invitations  with  gifts  of  venison,  transcribed  for  Pope  or  himself 
about  1729  a  letter  from  Dryden,  dated  July  21,  1698,  sent  in  answer 
to  one  of  his  hospitable  notes.  The  copy  may  be  found  among  the 
Additional  MSS.  at  the  British  Museum  (28,  618,  f.  84).  It  runs  as 
follows: 

Sir 

T  is  the  part  of  an  honest  Man  to  be  as  good  as  his  Word,  butt  you 
have  been  better:  I  expected  but  halfe  of  what  I  had,  and  that  halfe, 
not  halfe  so  Good.  Your  Vaneson  had  three  of  the  best  Qualities,  for 
it  was  both  fatt,  large  &  sweet.  To  add  to  this  you  have  been  pleased  to 
invite  me  to  Ladyholt,  and  if  I  could  promise  myself  a  year's  Life,  I 
might  hope  to  be  happy  in  so  sweet  a  Place,  &  in  the  Enjoyment  of  your 
good  Company.  How  God  will  dispose  of  me,  I  know  not:  but  I  am  apt 
to  flatter  myself  with  the  thoughts  of  itt,  because  I  very  much  desire  itt, 
and  am  Sr  with  all  manner  of  Acknowledgement, 

Yr  most  Obliged  and  most 

faith  full  Servant 
July  21,  1698.  John  Dryden. 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  297 

sidered  the  verses,  and  find  the  author  of  them  to 
have  notoriously  bungled;  that  he  has  placed  the 
words  as  confusedly  as  if  he  had  studied  to  do  so." 
He  proceeded  to  analyze  the  error  and  to  suggest  an 
amendment  of  it,  concluding:  "The  company  having 
done  me  so  great  an  honour  as  to  make  me  their 
judge,  I  desire  .  .  .  the  favour  of  making  my  ac- 
knowledgments to  them;  and  should  be  proud  to 
hear  .  .  .  whether  they  rest  satisfied  in  my  opin- 
ion." By  1685  his  authority  at  Will's  already  was 
established,  if  Spence's  story  of  how  young  Lockier 
won  his  approbation  there  may  be  trusted.  Robert 
Wolseley  the  same  year,  in  his  preface  to  Roches- 
ter's play  Falentinian,  referred  a  quarrel  with  Mul- 
grave  in  all  confidence  to  "Mr.  Dryden,  .  .  .  whose 
judgment  in  anything  that  relates  to  Poetry,  I  sup- 
pose, he  will  not  dispute."  There  was  little  disposi- 
tion among  the  younger  followers  of  literature  like 
Walsh  and  Dennis  to  contest  a  definition  or  a  pref- 
erence of  Mr.  Dryden's.  Nor  was  there  serious  doubt 
in  the  minds  of  beginning  poets  as  to  what  was  the 
best  in  matter,  form,  and  style;  Dryden  had  stamped 
an  image  of  himself  on  every  world  of  verse,  and 
few  could  refrain  from  falling  in  some  measure  into 
the  cadences  of  his  prologues,  his  epistles,  his  satires, 
his  discourses,  his  songs,  his  odes,  his  narratives. 
Publicly  also  it  was  understood  that  Dryden  repre- 
sented the  taste  of  the  nation  in  poetry.  The  man 
who  once  had  subsisted  by  panegyrizing  the  Crown, 
by  propitiating  the  coxcombs  of  the  theaters,  and 
later  by  being  a  partisan  in  verse,  was  now  more 
honorably  engaged  in  selling  his  verses  to  the  readers 


298         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

of  England  generally.  The  two  folios  of  1697  and 
1700,  the  Virgil  and  the  Fables,  are  memorials  not 
only  of  an  aged  poet's  power  but  of  an  awakening 
audience's  temper.  The  book-seller  with  his  sub- 
scription editions  was  now  in  a  position  to  guarantee 
a  kind  of  independence  and  professional  prosperity 
to  men  of  gifts;  there  Was  coming  into  existence  a 
reading  public.  Long  before  the  first  of  the  two 
folios  appeared  it  was  a  prevailing  wish  that  Dryden 
might  build  an  English  monument  in  meter.  "We 
hope  that  Mr.  Dryden  will  undertake  to  give  us  a 
Translation  of  Virgil,"  wrote  Motteux  in  his  "News 
of  Learning  from  Several  Parts"  in  the  Gentleman's 
Journal  for  March,  1694;  "'tis  indeed  a  most  diffi- 
cult work,  but  if  anyone  can  assure  himself  of  suc- 
cess in  attempting  so  bold  a  task,  'tis  doubtless  the 
Virgil  of  our  age,  for  whose  noble  Pen  that  best  of 
Latin  Poets  seems  reserved."  The  Virgil  and  the 
Fables  seem  today  to  stand  astride  of  the  interval 
between  Paradise  Lost  and  Pope's  Homer.  For  a 
generation  at  least  anyone  who  pretended  to  be  a 
reader  read  them,  as  one  who  expected  to  be  a  poet 
studied  them.  Dryden  himself,  complacently  enough, 
was  the  first  to  admit  his  own  supremacy;  knowing 
that  no  man  wrote  better  poetry,  he  said  as  much, 
and  so  infuriated  for  a  new  reason  such  rivals  in 
trade  as  grudged  him  his  eminence,  such  enemies  in 
politics  as  still  remembered  his  ill-timed  conversion 
to  Roman  Catholicism,  and  such  desperate  wits  as 
subsisted  at  the  fringe  of  literary  society  by  making 
sport  of  the  famous.  "More  libels  have  been  written 
against  me,  than  almost  any  man  now  living,"  he 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  299 

could  say  in  1693.  He  suffered  both  the  advantages 
and  the  disadvantages  of  having  no  real  rival  to 
draw  a  portion  of  the  fire. 

An  investigator  of  the  reputation  of  a  poet  seeks 
to  answer  three  questions.  As  for  his  vogue,  what 
poems  have  continued  to  be  read  ?  As  for  his  stand- 
ing, how  has  he  been  criticised  and  where  has  he 
been  ranked?  And  as  for  his  influence,  what  poets 
have  been  governed  or  at  any  rate  touched  by  his 
technique  and  personality?  It  seems  advisable  in 
the  case  of  Dryden  to  pursue  each  of  these  inquiries 
through  three  periods  since  his  death:  the  eighteenth 
century,  or  such  portions  of  it  as  preserved  fairly 
uniform  Augustan  standards;  the  late  eighteenth  and 
early  nineteenth  centuries,  when  there  was  a  more 
or  less  abrupt  break  with  those  standards;  and  all 
subsequent  time. 

Dryden 's  vogue  as  a  poet  in  any  one  period  can- 
not be  determined  with  exactness  on  the  basis  of 
collected  editions.  Taken  in  proportion  to  the  whole 
of  the  literary  public  the  readers  of  Dryden 's  poems 
i,n  the  nineteenth  century  were  scarcely  one-fourth 
as  numerous  as  they  had  been  in  the  eighteenth; 
yet  the  nineteenth  century  saw  four  times  as  many 
editons.  Tonson  printed  a  very  imperfect  folio  in 
1701  consisting  chiefly  of  Poems  on  Various  Occasions 
and  Translations  from  Several  Authors  extracted 
from  the  Miscellanies,  binding  it  with  two  volumes 
of  the  plays  and  the  1700  issue  of  the  Fables.  No 
other  collection  appeared  until  forty-two  years 
later,  when  the  house  of  Tonson  and  the  Rev. 
Thomas  Broughton  brought  out  in  two  compact 


300         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

volumes  the  "Occasional  Poems  and  Translations;" 
although  Congreve's  edition  of  the  plays  in  six 
volumes  in  1717  was  popular,  furnishing  the  material 
for  new  editions  in  1725,  1735,  1760,  and  1762.  Two 
volumes  of  Poems  and  Fables  appeared  in  Dublin  in 
1741  and  1753,  while  Glasgow  supported  two  vol- 
umes of  Original  Poems  in  1756,  1770,  1773,  1775,  and 
1776,  the  last  time  in  company  with  the  Fables. 
Samuel  Derrick  in  1760  and  1767  produced  for  the 
Tonsons  again  what  he  claimed  was  a  complete  set 
of  the  miscellaneous  poems  and  translations  in  four 
beautiful  octavo  volumes,  adding  an  ambitious 
Life  and  some  elaborate  notes,  the  first  of  their  kind 
upon  the  subject.  This  work  probably  forestalled 
a  somewhat  more  bulky  edition  of  both  the  prose 
and  the  verse  projected  by  James  Ralph  in  1758. 
Two  volumes  of  Original  Poems  and  Translations 
(1777)  were  followed  in  rapid  succession  during  the 
next  three-quarters  of  a  century  by  the  famous  series 
of  reprints  of  British  poets,  a  series  more  bought  than 
read.  The  collections  of  Bell  in  1777  and  1782, 
those  called  Johnson's  in  1779,  1790,  and  1822,  and 
those  of  Anderson  in  1793,  Park  in  1806  and  1808, 
Chalmers  in  1810,  Sandford  in  1819,  the  Aldine 
Poets  in  1832-33,  1834,  1843,  1844,  1852,  1854,  1865, 
1866,  1871,  and  1891,  the  Cabinet  Poets  in  1851, 
Routledge  in  1853,  Robert  Bell  in  1854,  1862,  and 
1870,  and  Gilfillan  in  1855,  1874,  and  1894,  to  name 
no  others,  did  not  succeed  in  bringing  great  bodies 
of  eager  new  readers  to  Dryden.  Scott's  exhaustive 
edition  of  1808,  reissued  in  1821  and  revised  by 
Professor  Saintbury  in  1882-1893,  was  unfortunately 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  301 

as  well  as  fortunately  a  monument;  it  never  has  lent 
itself  to  familiar  handling.  The  four  volumes  edited 
from  the  notes  of  the  Wartons  in  1811,  intended 
to  complement  Malone's  four  volumes  of  the  prose 
(1800),  were  printed  again  in  1851  and  1861.  W.  D. 
Christie's  Globe  Dry  den  of  1870,  since  republished 
many  times,  has  furnished  the  model  for  editions 
of  the  poems  in  a  single  volume.  Its  successors  have 
made  the  poet  easily  accessible  and  in  matters  of 
textual  accuracy  and  bibliography  have  done  him 
justice.  The  Cambridge  Dry  den  is  an  American 
masterpiece.  Most  of  these  many  editions  have  in- 
dicated little  more  than  that  the  English-reading 
world  has  expanded  and  that  new  libraries  have 
called  for  new  sets  of  standard  works.  It  is  else- 
where that  one  must  go  to  find  what  poems  of  Dry- 
den  in  particular  and  in  truth  have  lived  to  please. 
The  eighteenth  century,  being  interested  mostly 
in  Dryden 's  style,  was  much  devoted  to  his  trans- 
lations, in  which  it  was  considered,  not  very  ac- 
curately, that  his  style  showed  fullest  and  best.  The 
Virgil  was  reprinted  in  1698,  1709,  1716,  1721,  1730, 
1748,  1763, 1769,  1772, 1773, 1782,  1792,  and  1793,  the 
exceptional  interval  between  1730  and  1763  being 
partly  explainable  by  the  appearance  of  Christopher 
Pitt's  translation  of  the  JEneid  in  1740.  Pitt  was  a 
better  scholar  than  Dryden,  and  for  a  time  he  stood 
more  in  favor.  But  Dr.  Johnson  was  of  the  opinion 
"that  Pitt  pleases  the  critic,  and  Dryden  the  people; 
that  Pitt  is  quoted,  and  Dryden  read."  Neither 
is  read  often  or  carefully  now,  but  it  is  plain  that  if 
Dryden  lost  by  departing  from  Virgil,  Pitt  gained 


302         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

nothing  by  staying  close.  The  Juvenal  and  Persius 
were  published  in  1697,  1702,  1711,  1713,  1726,  1732, 
and  1735.  Various  portions  of  the  Ovid  appeared 
in  1701,  1705,  1709,  and  1712.  Sir  Samuel  Garth's 
composite  Metamorphoses  gave  due  prominence  to 
Dry  den's  pieces  both  in  the  first  edition  of  1717 
and  in  the  later  editions  of  1751  and  1794;  but  these 
came  out  separately  again  in  1719,  1720,  1725,  1729, 
1735,  1761,  1776,  1782,  1791,  and  1795.  The  Fables 
were  well  known  to  the  writers  of  the  Spectator  and 
Tatler,  and  even  Swift  permitted  himself  to  quote 
them.  They  were  freshly  issued  in  1713,  1721, 

1734,  1737,  1741,  1742,  1745,  1755,  1771,  1773,  1774, 
and  with  sumptuous  engravings  in  1797.  "It  is  to 
his  Fables,"  predicted  Joseph  Warton  in  the  Essay 
on  Pope,  "that  Dryden  will  owe  his  immortality." 
The  most  famous  single  poem  of  Dryden 's  through- 
out the  century  seems  to  have  been  the  Alexander's 
Feast.  Performed  by  musicians,  quoted  by  aestheti- 
cians  and  essayists,  printed  in  anthologies,  trans- 
lated into  Greek  and  Latin,  and  parodied,  it  had 
every  reason  to  be  known;  published  for  the  second 
time  by  Tonson  in  the  Fables  of  1700,  it  was  re- 
published  in  other  forms  in  1738,  1740,  1743,  1751, 
1756,  1758,  1760,  1773,  1778,  1779,  and  1780.  The 
Song  for  St.  Ceclia's  Day  (1687)  was  less  in  vogue, 
but  it  found  its  way  into  type  in  1754,  1760,  1764, 
and  1778.  The  ode  on  Anne  Killigrew  seems  never 
to  have  commanded  serious  attention  until  Dr. 
Johnson's  bold  praise  of  it  in  the  Life,  praise  which 
shocked  certain  readers  of  the  Gentleman's  Magazine 
into  sober  protest.  In  general  the  miscellaneous 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  303 

non-dramatic  verse  had  to  live  by  anthologies 
and  pirations.  As  has  been  observed  before,  Ton- 
son's  imperfect  edition  of  1701  had  no  successor  until 
1743;  and  neither  Broughton's  volumes  then  nor 
those  of  Derrick  later  were  notably  popular.  Yet 
during  the  interval  between  Tonson  and  Broughton 
it  was  never  difficult  to  become  acquainted  with 
Dryden  the  occasional  and  lyric  poet.  The  earlier 
editions  of  Poems  on  Affairs  of  State  virtually  exclu- 
ded him  on  the  ground  of  his  politics,  but  into  the 
later  volumes  of  that  series  and  into  most  other 
repositories  he  had  easy  entry.  From  the  West- 
minster Drolleries  in  1671-2  to  Tom  Durfey's  Pills 
to  Purge  Melancholy  in  1719-20,  and  longer,  no 
collection  of  English  songs  omitted  the  most  rous- 
ing of  those  from  Dryden 's  plays,  while  broadsides 
flung  them  into  rougher  company.  Handbooks  like 
those  of  Bysshe  and  Gildon  drew  heavily  upon  him 
for  examples  of  good  verse.  More  than  half  of 
Bysshe 's  "Collection  of  the  most  Natural,  Agree- 
able and  Noble  Thoughts  .  .  .  that  are  to  be  found 
in  the  best  English  Poets"  hails  from  Dryden.  But 
Dryden's  Miscellany  itself  gave  him  the  most  cur- 
rency. The  four  Miscellany  volumes  which  he  had 
engineered  for  Tonson  in  1684,  1685,  1693,  and  1694, 
and  which  had  been  by  no  means  the  least  sign  of 
his  leadership  while  he  lived,  were  followed  after 
his  death  by  a  fifth  part  in  1704  and  a  sixth  part  in 
1709.  In  1716  and  again  in  1727  all  six  were  col- 
lected and  reissued  with  new  material,  Dryden 
being  honored  by  the  inclusion  of  ninety-six  of  his 
pieces.  The  first  volume  opened  with  Mac  Flecknoe, 


304         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

as  it  had  at  the  beginning  of  the  series,  in  1684;  and 
here  or  there  all  the  public  poems  found  place:  that 
is  to  say,  the  two  parts  of  Absalom  and  Achitophel, 
the  Heroic  Stanzas,  Astraa  Redux,  To  His  Sacred 
Majesty,  To  My  Lord  Chancellor,  The  Medal,  Annus 
Mirabilis,  Threnodia  Augustalis,  The  Hind  and  the 
Panther,  Britannia  Rediviva,  and  Religio  Laid.  The 
occasional  verse  was  represented  by  nineteen  of  the 
prologues  and  eleven  of  the  epilogues,  by  the  epistles 
to  Etherege,  Kneller,  Howard,  Lady  Castlemaine, 
Charleton,  Higden,  the  Duchess  of  York,  Congreve 
and  Roscommon  and  by  the  elegies,  epitaphs  and 
epigrams  on  Hastings,  "Amyntas,"  "A  Very  Young 
Gentleman,"  Dundee,  "Young  Mr.  Rogers,"  Lady 
Whitmore,  Sir  Palmes  Fairborne,  "Eleonora,"  Anne 
Killigrew,  and  Milton.  There  were  six  songs  and  the 
Feni  Creator;  there  was  the  Art  of  Poetry;  and  there 
were  the  translations  from  Theocritus,  Lucretius, 
and  Horace,  with  the  Hector  and  Andromache  from 
Homer,  and  the  fourth  and  ninth  Eclogues  together 
with  the  episodes  of  Nisus,  Mezentius,  and  Vulcan 
from  Virgil.  Here  was  the  body,  certainly,  of  Dry- 
den's  verse.  Yet  it  is  a  question  whether  he  gained 
by  being  shuffled  so  recklessly  between  Tonson's 
covers  among  dozens  of  other  poets  living  and  dead, 
good  and  indifferent,  like  and  unlike  him.  It  was 
Broughton's  aim,  at  least,  in  1743,  to  separate  him 
from  the  mass  and  give  him  the  dignity  of  two 
pleasant  duodecimo  volumes  that  could  be  set 
alongside  the  small  editions  already  current  of  the 
Fables,  the  Virgil,  the  Juvenal,  and  the  dramatic 
works.  The  collectors  throughout  the  century  of 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  305 

fugitive  and  minor  poetry,  like  Dodsley,  Pearch, 
and  Nichols,  were  inclined  to  pass  Diyden  by  as  al- 
ready standard.  A.  F.  Griffith's  Collection  .  .  .  of 
English  Prologues  and  Epilogues  Commencing  with 
Shakespeare  and  Concluding  with  Garrick,  in  four  vol- 
umes, 1779,  the  completest  thing  of  its  kind  in  the 
language,  gave  him  the  first  place  with  eighty  pro- 
logues and  epilogues.  It  may  safely  be  concluded 
of  Dryden  in  the  eighteenth  century  that  although 
he  was  never  contagious  except  as  a  songster,  or 
much  on  the  lips  of  society,  he  yet  was  respectably 
current.  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu  carried  his 
best  couplets  in  her  mind  to  Constantinople.  Upon 
the  occasion  of  ThornhilPs  first  visit  to  the  Vicar 
of  Wakefield's  daughters,  music  was  proposed  and 
"a  favourite  song  of  Dryden  V  was  sung.  For  the 
most  part  Dryden  continued  to  keep  the  company 
of  literary  men.  The  Spectator  and  Taller  made  fre- 
quent use  of  the  translations  and  of  the  "characters" 
from  the  satires;  Dr.  Johnson,  virtually  every  page 
of  whose  Dictionary  gleamed  with  lines  from  Dryden 
as  well  as  with  lines  from  Pope  and  Shakespeare,  was 
fond  of  quoting  him  in  his  own  letters;  Gibbon, 
who  said  he  had  grown  up  on  the  Virgil  and  Pope's 
Homer ',  knew  the  Fables  and  the  satires  particularly 
well;  and  Burke  and  Charles  James  Fox  were  deeply 
indebted  to  the  prose. 

As  the  eighteenth  century  wore  away  it  was  in- 
creasingly difficult  to  be  interested  in  much  of  Dry- 
den's  political  and  occasional  verse  or  in  many  of  his 
translations  from  the  classics.  Editions  of  the  Ju- 
venal and  Persius  in  1810,  1813,  and  1822,  of  the 


306         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Firgil  in  1802,  1803,  1806,  1807,  1811,  1812,  1813, 
1819,  1820,  1822,  1823,  1824,  1825,  and  1830,  and  of 
the  Ovid  in  1804,  1807,  1812,  1815,  1824,  1826,  1833, 
and  1850,  to  come  no  further  down,  signified  ambi- 
tion in  publishers  or  the  survival  of  old-fashioned 
tastes  in  readers,  rather  than  any  real  vogue.  Scott's 
efforts  in  behalf  of  a  Dryden  tradition  included  an 
attractive  picture  of  "Glorious  John"  in  the  four- 
teenth chapter  of  The  Pirate,  a  picture  which  ap- 
pealed at  least  to  antiquarian  and  tory  minds.  "I 
wish  I  could  believe,"  wrote  Lockhart  in  the  Life, 
"that  Scott's  labours  had  been  sufficient  to  recall 
Dryden  to  his  rightful  station,  not  in  the  opinion  of 
those  who  make  literature  the  business  or  chief 
solace  of  their  lives — for  with  them  he  had  never 
forfeited  it — but  in  the  general  favour  of  the  intelli- 
gent public.  That  such  has  been  the  case,  however, 
the  not  rapid  sale  of  two  editions,  aided  as  they  were 
by  the  greatest  of  living  names,  can  be  no  proof;  nor 
have  I  observed  among  the  numberless  recent  pub- 
lication of  the  English  booksellers  a  single  reprint 
of  even  those  tales,  satires  and  critical  essays,  not 
to  be  familiar  with  which  would,  in  the  last  age,  have 
been  considered  as  disgraceful  in  any  one  making 
the  least  pretension  to  letters."  Lockhart  was  per- 
haps too  pessimistic.  The  Fables  had  found  pub- 
lishers in  1806  and  1822;  the  anthologists  of  the  time 
were  paying  due  attention  both  to  them  and  to  the 
satires,  the  best  of  the  occasional  poems,  and  the 
odes.  Campbell's  Specimens  of  the  British  Poets 
(1819)  included  the  "characters"  of  Achitophel, 
Zimri,  Og,  and  Doeg,  the  Killigrew,  the  descriptions 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  307 

of  Lycurgus  and  Emetrius  and  of  the  preparation 
for  the  tournament  in  Palamon  and  Arctic,  all  of 
Cymon  and  Iphigenia,  and  The  Flower  and  the  Leaf. 
Hazlitt's  Select  British  Poets  (1824)  offered  Absalom 
and  Achitophel,  Mac  Flecknoe,  Religio  Laid,  and  The 
Hind  and  the  Panther,  the  epistles  to  Congreve, 
Kneller,  and  Driden  of  Chesterton,  the  elegy  on 
Oldham,  Alexander's  Feast  and  the  Secular  Masque, 
The  Cock  and  the  Fox,  Sigismonda  and  Guiscardo, 
Theodore  and  Honoria,  Cymon  and  Iphigenia,  and 
Baucis  and  Philemon. 

The  trend  of  the  nineteenth  century  away  from 
Dryden  aroused  a  number  of  genuine  but  ineffectual 
protests  from  professional  literary  men.  The  editor 
of  a  volume  of  Selections  in  1852  began  his  preface 
thus:  "The  merits  of  Dryden  are  not  sufficiently  ac- 
knowledged at  present.  Our  zeal  for  the  poets  who 
preceded  the  civil  wars,  like  most  reactions,  is  be- 
come too  exclusive."  The  reviewer  of  Bell's  edition 
of  1854  in  the  Edinburgh  for  July,  1855,  enumerated 
four  reasons  for  "the  oblivion  into  which  the  works 
of  Dryden  have  so  singularly  fallen":  inability  to 
distinguish  between  Dryden  and  his  unworthy  imi- 
tators; failure  to  see  that  Dryden  himself  was  not 
another  Pope;  "monstrous"  ignorance  on  the  part 
of  Wordsworth,  Keats,  and  the  new  schools;  and  a 
heretical  notion  generally  that  Dryden  and  Pope 
were  not  poets.  There  were  other  and  better  rea- 
sons. But  whatever  the  whole  cause,  it  was  and  is 
true  regarding  the  bulk  of  Dryden's  work  that,  as 
Lowell  declared,  "few  writers  are  more  thoroughly 
buried  in  that  great  cemetery  of  the  'British  Poets."1 


3o8         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

He  has  not  become  absorbed  into  English  speech 
like  Pope,  nor  are  his  longer  poems  read  with  en- 
thusiasm as  wholes.  He  lies  about  in  splendid  frag- 
ments: the  four  "characters"  of  Shaftesbury,  Buck- 
ingham, Burnet,  and  Settle,  and  the  two  of  Shadwell; 
the  beginning  of  Religio  Laid  and  the  passage  there 
on  tradition;  the  first  eighty  lines  of  The  Hind  and 
the  Panther  and  the  eulogy  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  in  the  second  part;  the  translations  of  Lu- 
cretius on  death  and  Horace  on  contempt  of  Fortune; 
the  epigram  on  Milton;  the  elegy  on  Oldham;  the 
prologues  at  Oxford  and  before  Aureng-Zebe;  the 
epistles  to  Congreve  and  John  Driden;  the  odes  on 
Anne  Killigrew  and  St.  Cecilia's  Day;  and  half  a 
dozen  of  the  songs.  Alexander's  Feast  has  probably 
neyer  been  rivalled  in  popularity  by  another  of  the 
poems.  The  two  Cecilia  Odes  were  all  of  Dryden 
that  Palgrave  printed  in  his  Golden  Treasury,  and 
no  anthologist  since  has  neglected  them.  On  the 
whole  it  may  be  said  that  Dryden's  odes,  "those 
surprising  masterpieces,"  Robert  Louis  Stevenson 
wrote  to  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse  on  the  sixth  of  Decem- 
ber, 1880,  "where  there  is  more  sustained  eloquence 
and  harmony  of  English  numbers  than  in  all  that 
has  been  written  since,"  seem  the  most  indestructible 
portions  of  his  verse. 

No  important  detailed  criticism  of  Dryden  ap- 
peared in  the  eighteenth  century  outside  of  Dr.  John- 
son's Life,  which  in  itself  covered  all  the  ground  then 
visible.  Remarks  were  made,  eulogies  were  deliv- 
ered, commonplaces  were  handed  along,  but  little 
was  said  that  penetrated.  Swift  was  always  con- 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  309 

temptuous,  though  never  long  or  elaborately  so. 
Spence  quotes  Tonson  as  saying:  "Addison  was  so 
eager  to  be  the  first  name,  that  he  and  his  friend 
Sir  Richard  Steele  used  to  run  down  even  Dryden's 
character  as  far  as  they  could.  Pope  and  Congreve 
used  to  support  it."  A  publisher  of  a  man's  works 
may  be  pardoned  some  jealousy  of  his  reputation, 
but  it  is  probable  that  Tonson  exaggerated  the  feuds 
that  were  waged  even  in  the  Augustan  temple  of 
fame.  Addison  showed  himself  early  and  late  to  be 
closely  acquainted  with  Dryden's  poetry,  and  usually 
he  was  judicious  in  his  observations  upon  it.  In  his 
poem  To  Mr.  Dry  den  (1693)  and  his  Account  of  the 
Greatest  English  Poets  (1694)  he  gave  the  old  poet 
warm  if  vague  praise.  In  the  Tatler,  the  Spectator, 
and  the  Guardian  he  discounted  Dryden's  tragic 
style  as  bombastic,  revised  his  definition  of  wit, 
praised  his  satires  at  the  same  time  that  he  predicted 
short  life  for  them  because  of  the  temporary  char- 
acter of  their  allusions,  and  pointed  out  defects  in 
his  otherwise  admirable  translations.  Whatever 
may  have  been  Addison's  attempts  to  injure  Dryden 
in  conversation,  in  writing  he  was  a  fair  and  indeed 
a  salutary  critic.  At  one  time  it  was  believed  of 
Pope  that,  far  from  coming  to  Dryden's  aid,  he  was 
conspiring  against  his  remains.  John  Dennis,  who 
had  been  born  in  1657  and  who  consequently  had 
been  brought  up  on  Dryden  in  another  generation 
than  Pope's,  was  moved  in  1715  to  defend  the  great 
poet  of  his  choice  against  what  he  understood  to  be 
a  determined  conspiracy.  A  letter  to  Tonson  on  the 
fourth  of  June  expressed  his  sentiments:  "When  I 


310         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

had  the  good  fortune  to  meet  you  in  the  city,  it  was 
with  concern  that  I  heard  from  you  of  the  attempt 
to  lessen  the  reputation  of  Mr.  Dryden;  and  'tis 
with  indignation  that  I  have  since  learnt  that  that 
attempt  has  chiefly  been  carried  on  by  small 
poets.  .  .  .  But  when  I  heard  that  this  .  .  .  was 
done  in  favour  of  little  Pope,  that  diminutive  of 
Parnassus  and  of  humanity,  'tis  impossible  to 
express  to  what  a  height  my  indignation  and  dis- 
dain were  raised.  Good  God!"  And  he  goes  on  to 
justify  his  "zeal  for  the  Reputation  of  my  departed 
Friend,  whom  I  infinitely  esteemed  when  living  for 
the  Solidity  of  his  Thought,  for  the  Spring,  the 
Warmth,  and  the  beautiful  Turn  of  it;  for  the  Power, 
and  Variety,  and  Fullness  of  his  Harmony;  for  the 
Purity,  the  Perspicuity,  the  Energy  of  his  Expres- 
sion; and  (whenever  the  following  great  Qualities 
were  required)  for  the  Pomp  and  Solemnity,  and 
Majesty  of  his  Style."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  nothing 
is  more  familiar  than  the  veneration  of  little  Pope 
for  Dennis's  hero.  Congreve's  preface  to  Tonson's 
edition  of  the  dramatic  works  in  1717  pursued  a 
lofty  vein  of  eulogy,  as  did  a  passage  in  Garth's  pref- 
ace to  the  Metamorphoses  the  same  year.  There- 
after, Dryden  was  discussed  almost  exclusively  as 
a  man  with  a  style.  John  Oldmixon  blamed  Pope 
for  this  turn  of  affairs.  "Mr.  Dryden's  genius,"  he 
observed  in  his  Essay  on  Criticism  (1728),  "did  not 
appear  [according  to  Pope]  in  anything  more  than 
his  Versification;  and  whether  the  critics  will  have 
it  ennobled  for  that  versification  only,  is  a  question. 
The  Translator  [of  Homer]  seems  to  make  a  good 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  311 

genius  and  a  good  ear  to  be  the  same  thing.  Dryden 
himself  was  more  sensible  of  the  difference  between 
them,  and  when  it  was  in  debate  at  Will's  Coffee- 
house, what  character  he  would  have  with  posterity, 
he  said,  with  a  sullen  modesty,  'I  believe  they  will 
allow  me  to  be  a  good  versifier.' "  But  the  process  of 
ennobling  Dryden  for  his  versification  only  went  on. 
It  has  been  seen  that  Dennis  drew  or  implied  a  dis- 
tinction between  Dryden  and  Pope  on  the  score  of 
wealth  and  fire  of  expression.  This  survived  and 
became  hackneyed;  men  repeated  it  who  had  no 
other  notion  of  it  than  that  it  justified  a  noble  neg- 
ligence in  the  older  poet.  Dryden's  name  seems  to 
have  been  destined  to  come  down  jointly  with 
Pope's;  if  not  to  support  a  distinction,  as  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  at  least  to  imply  an  identity, 
as  in  the  nineteenth.  Pope  himself,  convinced  as 
he  was  that  Dryden  had  wanted  "the  greatest  art — 
the  art  to  blot,"  struck  the  note  that  was  to  rever- 
berate through  all  the  criticism  of  his  master  for  a 
century: 

Waller  was  smooth;  but  Dryden  taught  to  join 
The  varying  verse,  the  full  resounding  line, 
The  long  majestic  march,  and  energy  divine. 

It  occurred  to  some  to  couple  Dryden  with  Milton 
rather  than  with  Pope.  Gildon  did  so,  on  the  score 
of  harmony  in  versification,  in  his  Laws  of  Poetry 
(1721).  Gray  seemed  at  least  to  do  so  when  in  The 
Progress  of  Poesy  he  followed  praise  of  Milton's  epic 
with  praise  of  Dryden's  odes,  but  did  not  go  on  to 
Pope: 


312         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Behold,  where  Dryden's  less  presumptuous  car, 

Wide  o'er  the  fields  of  glory  bear 

Two  Coursers  of  ethereal  race, 

With  necks  in  thunder  clothed,  and  long-resounding  pace. 

James  Beattie,  in  a  long  footnote  to  his  Essay  on 
Poetry  and  Music  as  they  Affect  the  Mind  (1776),  ob- 
jected to  any  identification  of  Pope  with  Dryden: 
"Critics  have  often  stated  a  comparison  between 
Dryden  and  Pope,  as  poets  of  the  same  order,  and 
who  differed  only  in  degree  of  merit.  But,  in  my 
opinion,  the  merit  of  the  one  differs  considerably  in 
kind  from  that  of  the  other;"  that  is  to  say,  Dryden 
is  more  original,  various,  and  harmonious  though 
less  correct.  Dr.  Johnson  in  the  Life  of  Pope  gave 
the  palm  for  genius  "with  some  hesitation"  to  Dry- 
den. His  answer  to  Boswell  when  Boswell  quoted 
Voltaire's  mot  concerning  Pope's  "neat  nags"  and 
Dryden's  "stately  horses"  was  characteristic:  "Why, 
Sir,  the  truth  is,  they  both  drive  coaches  and  six: 
but  Dryden's  horses  are  either  galloping  or  stum- 
bling: Pope's  go  at  a  steady  even  trot."  A  passage 
in  the  Life  of  Pope  again  is  perhaps  the  classical  state- 
ment of  the  contrast:  "Dryden's  page  is  a  natural 
field,  rising  into  inequalities,  and  diversified  by  the 
varied  exuberance  of  abundant  vegetation;  Pope's 
is  a  velvet  lawn,  shaven  by  the  scythe,  and  levelled 
by  the  roller."  The  distinction  thrived  long  after 
it  ceased  to  be  of  critical  value.  In  1788  Joseph 
Weston  translated  a  Latin  poem  on  archery,  Philo- 
toxi  Ardence,  by  John  Morfitt,  into  couplets  "at- 
tempted in  the  manner  of  Dryden,"  and  wrote  an 
enthusiastic  preface  to  demonstrate  "the  Superiority 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  313 

of  Dryden's  Versification  over  that  of  Pope  and  of 
the  Moderns."  "I  cannot  help  thinking,"  he  con- 
fessed, "that  English  Rhyme  was  brought  by  that 
Wonderful  Man  to  the  Acme  of  Perfection;  and  that 
it  has  been,  for  many  years,  gradually  declining  from 
good  to  indifferent — and  from  indifferent  to  bad." 
He  anticipated  Wordsworth's  attack  on  "Poetic 
Diction,"  appealing  in  Dryden  to  vague,  romantic 
powers  of  speech  and  music.  Anna  Seward,  defend- 
ing Pope,  debated  with  Weston  at  great  length  in 
the  Gentleman's  Magazine  during  1789  and  1790. 
Half  a  dozen  others  were  drawn  into  the  contro- 
versy, which  ended  only  when  a  neutral  reader  pro- 
tested to  the  editor  against  so  many  stale  irrelevan- 
cies.  The  subject  was  never  completely  dismissed. 
When  Mrs.  Barbauld  edited  Collins  in  1797  she 
could  still  speak  of  "Dryden,  who  had  a  musical 
ear,  and  Pope  who  had  none."  The  insistence  by 
amateur  critics  upon  a  comparison  of  the  two  poets 
had  even  furnished  material  for  burlesque.  Dick 
Minim  had  said  all  that  needed  to  be  said  in  the 
sixtieth  Idler  in  1759.  George  Canning's  critique  of 
"The  Knave  of  Hearts"  in  the  Microcosm  for  Febru- 
ary 12,  1787,  did  not  lack  a  sober  pronouncement  that 
"Ovid  had  more  genius  but  less  judgment  than  Virgil; 
Dryden  more  imagination  but  less  correctness  than 
Pope." 

In  whatever  relation  he  was  kept  to  Pope,  Dry- 
den's  position  on  the  scale  of  English  poets  at  the 
end  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  very  different 
from  that  which  he  had  enjoyed  in  1700.  During 
the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century,  roughly 


314         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

speaking,  it  was  customary  to  mention  him  without 
shame  among  the  most  famous  of  all  poets,  to  set 
him  a  little  lower  perhaps  than  Shakespeare  and 
Milton  and  Spenser  but  at  least  to  leave  him  secure 
in  their  company.  The  "poetical  scale "  which  Gold- 
smith drew  up  for  the  Literary  Magazine  in  January, 
1758,  was  standard  mid-century  criticism: 

Genius      Judgment       Learning       Versification 

Chaucer  16  12  10  14 

Spenser  18  12  14  18 

Shakespeare         19  14  14  19 

Jonson  1 6  18  17  8 

Cowley  17  17  15  17 

Waller  12  12  10  16 

Milton  18  16  17  18 

Dryden  18  16  17  18 

Addison  16  18  17  17 

Prior  16  16  15  17 

Pope  18  18  15  19 

Men  like  Joseph  Warton  changed  all  that.  His  sen- 
timental but  potent  essay  on  Pope  in  1756  placed  the 
Elizabethans  on  another  level  from  the  Augustans, 
and  refused  Dryden  and  Pope  admittance  on  any 
poetical  basis  to  the  society  of  Shakespeare  and 
Spenser  and  Milton.  Among  what  he  called  "the 
second  class"  of  poets,  the  panegyrical,  occasional, 
and  didactic  poets,  he  found  the  author  of  Windsor 
Forest,  The  Rape  of  the  Lock,  and  Eloisa  to  Abelard 
first  because  of  his  perfection;  but  the  author  of 
Alexander's  Feast  crowded  a  close  second  by  virtue 
of  the  "genius"  he  had  shown  in  that  "divine" 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  315 

poem.  Dryden's  ode  was  called  on  more  than  once 
to  save  the  face  of  Augustan  verse.  "Goldsmith 
asserted,  that  there  was  no  poetry  produced  in  this 
age,"  wrote  Boswell,  referring  to  a  conversation  in 
1776.  "Dodsley  appealed  to  his  own  Collection,  and 
maintained,  that  though  you  could  not  find  a  palace 
like  Dryden's  Ode  on  St.  Cecilia's  Day,  you  had 
villages  composed  of  very  pretty  houses.  .  .  .  John- 
son .  .  .  'You  may  find  wit  and  humour  in  verse, 
and  yet  no  poetry."1  Warton's  main  thesis  outlasted 
any  of  its  qualifications.  Dryden  and  Pope  were 
buried  by  him  where  it  seemed  less  and  less  important 
each  year  to  decide  which  had  more  or  any  genius. 
The  glance  of  the  new  century  fell  on  the  standard 
poets  of  England  from  new  and  dizzy  altitudes. 
Even  now,  when  "orders"  and  "classes"  of  poetry 
mean  nothing,  Dryden  is  likely  to  be  discounted 
before  he  is  read. 

"He  has  not  written  one  line  that  is  pathetic, 
and  very  few  that  can  be  considered  as  sublime," 
decided  Jeffreys  in  his  review  of  Ford's  plays  for  the 
Edinburgh  Review  in  1811.  Add  of  Dryden  that  it 
was  generally  believed  he  had  written  little  that  was 
ineffably  beautiful,  and  the  central  position  of  early 
nineteenth  century  Dryden  criticism  is  established. 
Criticism  of  poetry  at  that  time  usually  meant  the 
invoking  and  imposing  of  categories  rather  than  the 
first-hand  studying  of  men;  the  preoccupation  of 
critics  was  mostly  with  "kinds"  of  writing.  There 
were  dogmas  then  as  there  had  been  dogmas  at  the 
beginning  of  the  last  century.  New  conceptions 
of  the  creative  function  of  the  imagination  had  led 


3i6         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

to  a  deep  distrust  of  Hobbes's  psychology  and  the 
poetry  of  the  "empirical  school."  Admiration  of 
Dryden  had  to  be  expressed  in  terms  of  opposition 
to  the  new  creeds  or  in  terms  of  Pope.  A  few  Tories 
in  taste  fell  back  on  the  old-fashioned  glories.  To 
the  editor  Scott,  Dryden  was  "our  immortal  bard," 
second  only  to  Milton  and  Shakespeare;  "Glorious 
John,"  even  when  he  had  said  nothing,  had  written 
imperishably  noble  verse;  Alexander's  Feast  was 
the  best  of  English  lyrics.  George  Ellis,  writing 
to  Scott  about  the  edition  he  had  fathered,  admitted 
that  "I  ought  to  have  considered  that  whatever 
Dryden  wrote  must,  for  some  reason  or  other,  be 
worth  reading;"  and  he  professed  himself  in  particu- 
lar a  passaionate  admirer  of  the  Fables ',  "the  noblest 
specimen  of  versification  .  .  .  that  is  to  be  found  in 
any  modern  language;"  Theodore  and  Honoria,  he 
said,  should  have  "a  place  on  the  very  top-most 
shelf  of  English  poetry."  George  Canning,  writing 
on  July  26th,  1811,  spoke  to  Scott  of  "the  majestic 
march  of  Dryden  (to  my  ear  the  perfection  of  har- 
mony)." Henry  Hallam's  review  of  the  Dryden  in 
the  Edinburgh  deplored  Scott's  occupation  with  the 
rubbish  of  the  minor  works,  but  agreed,  while  find- 
ing fault  with  the  Fables,  that  at  the  best  Dryden 's 
animation  and  variety  were  hardly  surpassable.  The 
most  important  criticism  of  Dryden  in  this  period, 
however,  ranged  itself  along  the  question  whether 
he  and  Pope  had  been  poets.  "It  is  the  cant  of  our 
day — above  all,  of  its  poetasters,"  said  Lockhart, 
"that  Johnson  was  no  poet.  To  be  sure,  they  say 
the  same  of  Pope — and  hint  it  occasionally  even  of 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  317 

Dryden."  It  was  more  than  "said"  of  Pope,  and 
it  was  more  than  "hinted"  of  Dryden;  it  was  sol- 
emnly asseverated  of  both,  one  of  the  results  be- 
ing an  intermittent  controversy  between  Bowles, 
Wordsworth,  Keats,  Southey,  Coleridge,  and  the  like 
on  the  one  hand  and  Byron,  Campbell,  Crabbe, 
Rogers,  Gifford,  and  the  like  on  the  other.  The  con- 
troversy started  over  Pope.  Bowies'  edition  of  Pope 
in  1806  contained  some  strictures  on  his  character 
as  a  man  and  as  a  poet.  Byron  was  careful  to  ridi- 
cule Bowles  for  this,  among  other  things,  in  his  Eng- 
lish Sards  of  1809.  To  Campbell's  championship 
of  Pope  in  the  preface  to  his  Specimens  in  1819 
Bowles  replied  in  the  same  year  with  a  paper  on  the 
Invariable  Principles  of  Poetry.  In  Wordsworth's 
Essay  Supplementary  to  the  Preface  (1815)  had  ap- 
peared a  few  remarks  derogating  Dryden 's  treatment 
of  Nature.  Byron  broke  out  in  the  third  canto  of 
Don  Juan: 

"Pedlars"  and  "Boats"  and  "Waggons!"  Oh!  Ye  shades 
Of  Pope  and  Dryden,  are  we  come  to  this? 

The  "little  boatman"  and  his  Peter  Bell 
Can  sneer  at  him  who  drew  "Achitophel"! 

And  in  1821  he  published  a  Letter  ...  on  the  Rev. 
William  L.  Bowies'  Strictures  on  the  Life  and  Writ- 
ings of  Pope.  A  letter  written  from  Ravenna  on 
March  I5th,  1820,  in  reply  to  an  article  in  Black- 
wood's  on  Don  Juan,  was  devoted  in  the  second  half 
to  a  passionate  defense  of  Pope.  Byron  attributed 
what  he  found  to  be  a  decline  in  English  poetry  to 
the  fact  that  poets  could  no  longer  appreciate  the 


3i8         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

little  Queen  Anne  master.  "Dilettanti  lecturers" 
and  reviewers  were  following  in  the  wake  of  the  poet- 
asters, and  only  a  handful  of  men  remained  in  Eng- 
land— Crabbe,  Rogers,  Gifford,  Campbell,  and  him- 
self— with  liberal  perspectives.  As  for  himself  he 
declared:  "I  have  ever  loved  and  honored  Pope's 
poetry  with  my  whole  soul,  and  hope  to  do  so  till 
my  dying  day."  Nothing  was  being  produced  now, 
he  swore,  to  match  Pope's  Essay  on  Man,  Eloisa 
to  Abelard,  The  Rape  of  the  Lock,  and  "Sporus,"  or 
Dryden's  Fables,  odes,  and  Absalom.  Bowles  had 
preferred  Dryden  to  Pope  on  musical  grounds.  By- 
ron himself  had  written  in  the  English  Sards,  after 
some  lines  on  Pope : 

Like  him  great  Dryden  poured  the  tide  of  song, 
In  stream  less  smooth,  indeed,  yet  doubly  strong. 

But  in  general  he  was  inclined  to  call  Pope  a  better 
because  a  more  perfect  poet.  The  tradition  of  Dry- 
den's  "genius"  survived  in  one  form  or  another 
throughout  the  discussion.  Coleridge  decided  that 
"if  Pope  was  a  poet,  as  Lord  Byron  swears,  then 
Dryden  .  .  .  was  a  very  great  poet."  Hazlitt,  in  his 
essay  on  Dryden  and  Pope,  was  no  more  inclined 
than  Coleridge  to  credit  either  with  essentially  poetic 
powers,  though  as  he  surveyed  them  within  their 
class  he  found  Pope  to  be  a  more  consummate  artif- 
icer; Dryden  seemed  largely  tinsel,  his  odes  wholly 
mechanical  and  meretricious.  Yet  it  mortified  Haz- 
litt, who  knew  that  the  Augustans,  if  they  had  not 
been  great  poets,  had  been  at  least  great  writers  of 
some  sort,  to  hear  Wordsworth  disparage  Pope  and 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  319 

Dryden,  "whom,  because  they  have  been  supposed 
to  have  all  the  possible  excellences  of  poetry,  he  will 
allow  to  have  none."  Wordsworth's  position  is  well 
known.  His  letter  to  Scott  in  1805  contained  all 
the  praise  that  he  could  honestly  give,  which  was  that 
Dryden  possessed  "a  certain  ardour  and  impetuosity 
of  mind,  with  an  excellent  ear;"  while  his  various 
prefaces  sternly  denied  both  to  Dryden  and  to  Pope 
the  highest  imaginative  gifts.  Henry  Crabb  Rob- 
inson, in  his  diary  for  January  6th,  1842,  recorded  a 
walk  with  Wordsworth :  "Today  he  talked  of  poetry. 
He  held  Pope  to  be  a  greater  poet  than  Dryden; 
but  Dryden  to  have  most  talent,  and  the  strongest 
understanding."  Landor  was  moderately  an  ad- 
mirer of  the  great  satirist  of  the  Exclusion  Bill. 

None  ever  crost  our  mystic  sea 

More  richly  stored  with  thought  than  he; 

Though  never  tender  nor  sublime, 

He  wrestles  with  and  conquers  Time, 

he  wrote  to  Wordsworth.  In  the  second  Imaginary 
Conversation  with  Southey  he  confined  his  praise 
to  Dryden 's  couplet-verse,  dismissing  the  Pindarics 
as  vulgar.  "Alexander's  Feast  smells  of  gin  at 
second-hand,  with  true  Briton  fiddlers  full  of  native 
talent  in  the  orchestra."  Its  author,  he  answered 
for  Southey,  must  be  content  with  credit  for  "a 
facility  rather  than  a  fidelity  of  expression." 

If  Dryden's  reputation  left  the  romantic  battle- 
ground somewhat  battered,  it  has  pursued  a  fairly 
smooth  course  down  the  nineteenth  century  highway. 
Historians  of  English  literature  have  been  busy  es- 


320         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

tablishing  Dryden's  importance  as  a  representative 
figure  and  giving  him  his  due  as  an  innovator; 
aestheticians  have  contributed  their  notions  of  the 
points  wherein  he  is  entitled  to  please;  and  great  cos- 
mopolitan critics  have  brought  to  him  a  learning  and 
a  taste  ripened  through  contact  with  many  other 
literatures.  He  emerges  without  his  old  glory,  per- 
haps, but  with  a  respectable  group  of  virtues  which 
seem  to  be  his  now  for  all  time.  Discussion  of  him 
has  inclined  to  be  general,  and  writers,  often  casu- 
istically,  have  tended  to  grant  him  vaguely  defined 
powers  which  they  themselves  have  not  always 
understood;  yet  a  limited  body  of  readers  has  con- 
tinued to  know  him  intimately  and  soundly.  A 
steady  succession  of  articles  in  the  Tory  periodicals, 
notably  in  the  Quarterly  Review,  perhaps  the  main- 
stay of  his  reputation,  has  kept  his  personality  rea- 
sonably fresh,  while  from  time  to  time  new  em- 
phasis has  been  laid  upon  the  obscurer  portions  of 
his  work.  Robert  Bell's  Life  in  1854,  as  well  as 
reviews  of  it  in  Fraser's  Magazine  and  elsewhere, 
singled  out  the  prologues  and  the  epilogues  for  ap- 
plause. Tennyson,  Fitzgerald,  Professor  Conington, 
and  others  have  insisted  upon  the  original  and  en- 
during qualities  of  the  Virgil,  which  Wordsworth 
gave  up  trying  to  surpass,  and  which  still  has  more 
vitality  than  any  other  translation.  The  Juvenal 
and  the  Lucretius  maintain  a  solid  place  among  ver- 
sions of  the  classics,  both  for  their  strength  and  for 
their  beauty.  Latterly  there  has  been  a  tendency 
to  emphasize  the  lyrics,  especially  the  songs,  those 
from  the  plays  having  been  reprinted  in  the  last 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  321 

two  editions  of  the  poems  in  a  more  complete  form 
than  that  in  which  the  Warton  volumes  presented 
them  in  1811.  Macaulay's  brilliant  but  doctrinaire 
essay  of  1828  has  made  it  seem  necessary  to  most 
subsequent  critics  to  discuss  the  character  of  Dry- 
den.  While  Dryden  the  turncoat,  Dryden  the 
flatterer,  Dryden  the  writer  of  indecent  plays  and 
poems  has  been  scrupulously  damned  by  men  like 
Christie,  numerous  editors  and  reviewers  have 
stepped  to  his  defense  bringing  elaborate  excuses. 
The  better  view  seems  latterly  to  be  that  there  is 
little  reason  to  be  sorrowful  over  the  behavior  of  a 
canny  man  of  letters  who  never  at  any  time  pre- 
tended to  be  equipped  with  principles  worth  dying 
or  becoming  a  pauper  for.  As  a  poet  his  personality 
has  often  been  sketched.  Lowell,  whose  respect  for 
Dryden  was  permanent  and  wholesome,  and  whose 
essay  of  1868  contains  what  is  still,  except  for  that 
of  Dr.  Johnson,  the  most  conscientious  criticism  of 
the  poet  in  English,  found,  after  making  all  the 
necessary  deductions  from  his  character  and  his 
fame,  that  something  indefinably  large  yet  re- 
mained. "You  feel,"  he  said,  "that  the  whole  of 
him  is  better  than  any  random  specimens,  though 
of  his  best,  seem  to  prove."  "There  is  a  singular 
unanimity  in  allowing  him  a  certain  claim  to  great- 
ness which  would  be  denied  to  men  as  famous  and 
more  read, — to  Pope  or  Swift,  for  example."  "He 
is  a  curious  example  of  what  we  often  remark  of  the 
living,  but  rarely  of  the  dead, — that  they  get  credit 
for  what  they  might  be  as  much  as  for  what  they 
are, — and  posterity  has  applied  to  him  one  of  his 


322         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

own  rules  of  criticism,  judging  him  by  the  best 
rather  than  the  average  of  his  achievement,  a  thing 
posterity  is  seldom  wont  to  do."  These  were  shrewd 
remarks;  yet  they  were  not  followed  by  an  account 
equally  shrewd  of  Dryden's  rhythmical  genius  and 
intellectual  gathering-power,  it  being  there  that  his 
largeness,  indefinable  or  not,  resides.  Emerson, 
blandly  wild,  threw  all  of  Dryden  overboard  in  the 
essay  on  Poetry  and  Imagination  which  he  cast  into 
final  shape  in  1872.  "Turnpike  is  one  thing  and  blue 
sky  another.  Let  the  poet,  of  all  men,  stop  with  his 
inspiration.  The  inexorable  rule  in  the  Muses'  court, 
either  inspiration  or  silence,  compels  the  bard  to 
report  only  his  supreme  moments.  .  .  .  Much  that 
we  call  poetry  is  but  polite  verse."  "A  little  more  or 
less  skill  in  whistling  is  of  no  account.  See  those 
weary  pentameter  tales  of  Dryden  and  others." 
Matthew  Arnold,  warring  against  provincialism  in 
the  study  of  literature  and  bringing  "touchstones" 
from  the  ends  of  the  earth  wherewith  to  test  the 
poets  of  his  own  country,  found,  as  he  reported  in 
the  Introduction  to  Ward's  English  Poets  (1880), 
that  Dryden  and  Pope  had  been  the  inaugurators 
of  an  immensely  important  "age  of  prose  and  rea- 
son" but  that  they  were  insignificant  as  poets,  per- 
haps not  poets  at  all.  In  the  essay  on  Gray  he  ex- 
plained his  position  in  greater  detail,  saying,  "The 
difference  between  genuine  poetry  and  the  poetry 
of  Dryden,  Pope  and  all  their  school,  is  briefly  this: 
their  poetry  is  conceived  and  composed  in  their  wits, 
genuine  poetry  is  conceived  and  composed  in  the 
soul."  This  proposition  sounds  at  least  broad 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  323 

enough;  yet  in  Arnold  it  was  susceptible  of  and  re- 
ceived a  somewhat  narrow  handling.  "Soul"  in 
Arnold  suggests  stoicism;  stoicism  suggests  philo- 
sophic melancholy;  philosophic  melancholy  suggests 
sentiment;  a  poem  "conceived  in  the  soul"  suggests 
a  poem  conceived  in  spiritual  pain.  Arnold's  touch- 
stones, if  not  sentimental,  did  deal  in  pain,  sad  old 
memories,  and  death,  an  atmosphere  which  Dryden 
could  hardly  expect  to  survive.  If  there  were  to  be 
no  touchstones  ringing  with  malice,  disdain,  or  merri- 
ment, Dryden  could  lay  no  claim  to  a  soul.  He  had 
not  written  his  verse  to  "console"  or  "sustain"  a 
bewildered  generation  of  fin  de  siecle  scholars.  He 
had  written  to  please  hard-headed  men  of  the  world; 
he  had  labored  to  satisfy  critics  of  poetry,  not  critics 
of  souls.  He  had  written  genuine  poetry,  but  he 
was  not  a  Dante.  In  the  Introduction  again  Arnold 
thought  he  detected  a  truer  note  in  a  passage  of 
Dryden's  prose  which,  if  the  truth  be  known,  is  the 
least  expressive  possible  of  the  indomitable  Au- 
gustan: "What  Virgil  wrote  in  the  vigour  of  his  age, 
in  plenty  and  at  ease,  I  have  undertaken  to  trans- 
late in  my  declining  years;  struggling  with  wants, 
oppressed  with  sickness,  curbed  in  my  genius,  liable 
to  be  misconstrued  in  all  I  wrote."  Arnold  felt  ten- 
derly towards  this;  Swift  had  simply  roared.  Arnold 
was  distinctly  unjust  to  the  odes.  In  the  essay  on 
Gray  he  placed  the  most  miserable  stanza  of  the 
Killigrew  alongside  of  the  best  three  lines  in  Pindar 
and  observed  that  Pindar  killed  Dryden.  It  may  be 
true  that  Pindar  will  kill  Dryden  under  any  circum- 
stances; in  the  present  instance  Dryden  died  without 


324         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

even  a  fighting  chance.  Pater  agreed  with  Arnold 
that  Dryden's  prose  was  more  beautiful  than  his 
verse.  "Dryden,"  he  wrote  in  1888  in  Style,  "with 
the  characteristic  instinct  of  his  age,  loved  to  em- 
phasize the  distinction  between  poetry  and  prose, 
the  protest  against  their  confusion  coming  with 
somewhat  diminished  effect  from  one  whose  poetry 
was  so  prosaic."  The  influence  of  Arnold  has  been 
very  great.  In  an  age  whose  infinitely  flexible  prose 
has  captured  the  throne  of  the  imagination  and 
promises  to  hold  it  while  the  language  lasts,  he  has 
taught  nine  readers  out  of  ten  that  Dryden  is  a 
prosaic  poet.  He  is  dogmatic  and  wrong;  but  pro- 
tests are  irrelevant  till  the  whole  wheel  of  fashion 
turns  another  round. 

Dryden  is  nothing  if  not  a  poets'  poet,  which 
Lowell  denied  he  was.  He  is  not  for  philosophers, 
plainly,  or  for  laymen;  he  does  not  move  the  minds 
of  the  few  or  the  hearts  of  the  many.  He  has  tem- 
pered not  spirits  but  pens;  Lowell  notwithstanding, 
he  is  as  much  as  Spenser  a  poet  for  poets.  Not  only 
in  his  own  generation,  or  in  the  next,  but  in  all  that 
have  succeeded  he  has  stood  on  the  shelves  of  writers 
and  offered  the  stimulus  of  a  style  that  is  both 
musical  and  stout.  Poets  of  widely  varying  com- 
plexions have  made  important  use  of  him,  never 
exactly  reproducing  him,  for  that  is  impossible  even 
if  desirable,  but  drawing  from  him  the  strength  or 
the  beauty  they  have  seemed  to  need. 

In  the  eighteenth  century  he  shared  with  Milton 
and  Pope  the  distinction,  enviable  or  not,  of  inspir- 
ing the  "poetic  diction"  which  Wordsworth  later 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  325 

on  was  to  receive  so  coldly.  Milton  in  blank  verse 
and  Dryden  and  Pope  in  the  heroic  couplet  were, 
if  Spenser  and  his  stanza  be  for  the  moment  disre- 
garded, the  great  models  of  versification  under  Queen 
Anne  and  the  first  two  Georges.  On  the  side  of  the 
heroic  couplet  Dryden  exercised  two  varieties  of  in- 
fluence according  as  he  was  identified  with  Pope  or 
distinguished  from  him.  In  a  certain  sense  he  had 
identified  himself  with  Pope  when  he  had  created 
him;  for  if  Dryden  had  not  written,  it  is  a  question 
what  Pope  would  be.  "I  learned  versification  wholly 
from  Dryden's  works,"  Pope  told  Spence;  he  has 
echoed  Dryden  everywhere,  not  only  cadence  for 
cadence  but  sometimes  word  for  word  and  line  for 
line.  Zimri  and  Og  begat  Wharton  and  Sporus; 
Mac  Flecknoe  begat  the  Dunciad;  the  Religio  Laid 
and  The  Hind  and  the  Panther  begat  the  Moral 
Essays;  the  Cecilia  of  1687  begat  the  Cecilia  of  1708; 
the  Virgil  begat  the  Homer;  and  the  Fables  begat  the 
Paraphrases  from  Chaucer.  Yet  in  another  sense 
Pope  derived  not  from  Dryden  at  all,  but  from  the 
smooth,  equable  tradition  of  Sandys  and  Waller. 
Poets  who  knew  this,  and  who  set  Dryden's  "genius" 
over  against  Pope's  correctness,  thought  to  capture 
the  secret  of  that  "genius."  In  the  first  place,  they 
remarked,  Dryden,  for  an  Augustan,  was  bewilder- 
ing in  his  variety.  A  passage  of  only  eight  lines 
from  Tyrannic  Love,  for  instance,  combined  three 
styles  as  far  apart  from  one  another  as  those  of 
Shakespeare's  Julius  Casar,  Pope's  Pastorals,  and 
Beattie's  Minstrel: 


326         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Him  have  I  seen  (on  Ister's  banks  he  stood, 
Where  last  we  wintered)  bind  the  headlong  flood 
In  sudden  ice;  and,  where  most  swift  it  flows, 
In  crystal  nets  the  wondering  fishes  close. 
Then,  with  a  moment's  thaw,  the  streams  enlarge, 
And  from  the  mesh  the  twinkling  guests  discharge. 
In  a  deep  vale  or  near  some  ruined  wall, 
He  would  the  ghosts  of  slaughtered  soldiers  call. 

In  the  second  place  he  was  impetuous,  and  when 
need  was,  negligent.  The  negligence  was  easy  to  ap- 
proximate, the  impetuosity  not  so  easy.  Gildon  in- 
veighed against  versifiers  who  aped  Dryden's  man- 
nerisms without  reviving  his  spirit,  John  Hughes 
and  Walter  Harte  being  conspicuous  among  those 
who  affected  triplets  and  Alexandrines  so  as  to  be- 
come like  the  author  of  the  State  of  Innocence.  Harte 
introduced  his  Vision  of  Death  in  1767  with  a  tribute 
which  might  have  done  for  a  contemporary  Dryden 
creed : 

Who  but  thyself  the  mind  and  ear  can  please, 

With  strength  and  softness,  energy  and  ease; 

Various  of  numbers,  new  in  every  strain; 

Diffused,  yet  terse,  poetical,  though  plain; 

Diversified  midst  unison  of  chime; 

Freer  than  air,  yet  manacled  with  rhyme, 

Thou  mak'st  each  quarry  which  thou  seek'st  thy  prize, 

The  reigning  eagle  of  Parnassian  skies.  .  .  . 

Thy  thoughts  and  music  change  with  every  line; 

No  sameness  of  a  prattling  stream  is  thine.  .  .  . 

Infinite  descant,  sweetly  wild  and  true. 

Still  shifting,  still  improving,  and  still  new!  .  .  . 

To  Spenser  much,  to  Milton  much  is  due; 

But  in  great  Dryden  we  preserve  the  two. 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  327 

Dryden's  essential  energy  went  by  no  means  unob- 
served. Akenside's  Epistle  to  Curio  of  1744  was  a 
more  powerful  poem  than  it  might  have  been  if  its 
author  had  never  studied  Absalom  and  Achitophel. 
Gray  told  James  Beattie,  according  to  Mason,  that 
he  had  learned  all  he  knew  about  versification  from 
the  long-resounding  Dryden;  "Remember  Dryden," 
he  wrote  to  Beattie  in  1765,  "and  be  blind  to  all 
his  faults."  "By  him,"  concluded  Dr.  Johnson, 
"we  were  taught  sapere  et  fari,  to  think  naturally 
and  express  forcibly."  More  obstreperous  disciples 
rushed  to  him  because  they  were  tired  of  Pope  and 
thirsty  for  poetic  license.  Goldsmith,  in  the  dedica- 
tion of  his  Traveller  in  1764,  remarked  without  ten- 
derness upon  the  "blank  verse,  and  Pindaric  Odes, 
choruses,  anapests  and  iambics,  alliterative  care 
and  happy  negligence"  with  which  poets  were  amus- 
ing themselves  though  not  their  readers;  a  man  like 
Churchill  the  satirist,  he  intimated,  was  receiving 
credit  that  scarcely  was  due  him;  "his  turbulence  is 
said  to  be  force,  and  his  frenzy  fire."  Churchill  fled 
Pope  for  Dryden  and  Shakespeare.  He  complained 
in  the  Apology  that  contemporary  verse  had  degen- 
erated into 

A  happy  tuneful  vacancy  of  sense. 

He  wished  to  restore  "Great  Dryden"  to  his  own, 
and  to  cultivate 

The  generous  roughness  of  a  nervous  line. 
He  succeeded  in  striking  up  a  fresh  but  not  a  lasting 


328         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

tune.  Cowper  reviewed  his  achievement  in  Table 
Talk: 

Churchill,  himself  unconscious  of  his  powers, 
In  penury  consumed  his  idle  hours, 
And,  like  a  scattered  seed  at  random  sown, 
Was  left  to  spring  by  vigour  of  his  own.  .  .  . 
Surly  and  slovenly,  and  bold  and  coarse, 
Too  proud  for  art,  and  trusting  in  mere  force, 
Spendthrift  alike  of  money  and  of  wit, 
Always  at  speed,  and  never  drawing  bit, 
He  struck  the  lyre  in  such  a  careless  mood, 
And  so  disdained  the  rules  he  understood, 
The  laurel  seemed  to  wait  on  his  command, 
He  snatched  it  rudely  from  the  Muse's  hand. 

Cowper  himself  had  not  been  ignorant  of  Dryden. 
The  lines  in  the  Task, 

There  is  a  pleasure  in  poetic  pains 
Which  only  poets  know, 

harked  back  to  the  Spanish  Friar: 

There  is  a  pleasure  sure 
In  being  mad  which  none  but  madmen  know. 

And  the  "characters"  in  Conversation  and  other 
poems  recalled  Dryden  as  much  as  Pope.  But  now 
it  was  fairly  rare  that  either  Dryden  or  Pope  was 
called  upon  as  tutor  to  an  English  poet.  Cowper, 
and  later  Crabbe,  wrote  for  another  world  than  either 
of  theirs  had  been;  Gifford's  Juvenal  only  echoed, 
not  recalled  the  past;  the  chime  of  Augustan  verse 
was  done,  and  thenceforth  'one  who  went  to  Dryden 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  329 

for  aid  went  because  he  recognized  an  intrinsic  gift, 
not  because  Dryden  was  the  mode. 

Wordsworth,  inhospitable  to  his  predecessors  as 
he  was,  knew  many  thousand  lines  of  Dryden  and 
Pope  by  heart,  and  was  never  insensible  to  the  effects 
that  Dryden  had  gained  by  virtue  of  his  "excellent 
ear."  Tom  Moore,  said  Leigh  Hunt  in  the  Auto- 
biography, "contemplated  the  fine,  easy-playing, 
muscular  style  of  Dryden  with  a  sort  of  perilous 
pleasure.  I  remember  his  quoting  with  delight  a 
couplet  of  Dryden 's  which  came  with  a  particular 
grace  from  his  lips : — 

Let  honour  and  preferment  go  for  gold; 
But  glorious  beauty  is  not  to  be  sold." 

Hunt  himself  was  one  of  the  first  of  the  Cockney 
School  to  succumb  to  that  "stream  of  sound"  which 
Hazlitt  called  the  Fables.  His  Story  of  Rimini  de- 
rived from  Dante  in  plot,  in  style  from  Dryden.  As 
he  explains  in  the  Autobiography,  "Dryden,  at  that 
time,  in  spite  of  my  sense  of  Milton's  superiority, 
and  my  early  love  of  Spenser,  was  the  most  delight- 
ful name  to  me  in  English  poetry.  I  had  found  in 
him  more  vigour,  and  music  too,  than  in  Pope,  who 
had  been  my  closest  poetical  acquaintance;  and  I 
could  not  rest  till  I  had  played  on  his  instrument.  .  . 
My  versification  was  far  from  being  so  vigorous  as 
his.  There  were  many  weak  lines  in  it.  It  succeeded 
best  in  catching  the  variety  of  his  cadences;  at  least 
so  far  as  they  broke  up  the  monotony  of  Pope." 
The  Story  of  Rimini  is  liberally  Alexandrined  after 
the  manner  of  the  Fables,  but  it  signally  fails  to 


330         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

achieve  much  or  any  of  Dryden's  strong-backed 
vigor.  It  has  a  Cockney  limpness  and  pertness,  but 
there  is  nothing  that  is  significant  in  its  metrical 
variety.  What  Hunt  did  not  do  Keats  in  some 
measure  did  in  his  Lamia,  which  according  to  Charles 
Armitage  Brown  he  wrote  "with  great  care  after 
much  study  of  Dryden's  versification."  In  "Sleep 
and  Poetry,"  in  the  Poems  of  1817,  he  had  taken 
pains  to  address  a  most  unscholarly  rebuke  to  Dry- 
den  and  Pope : 

Why  were  ye  not  awake?    But  ye  were  dead 
To  things  ye  knew  not  of, — were  closely  wed 
To  musty  laws  lined  out  with  wretched  rule 
And  compass  vile;  so  that  ye  taught  a  school 
Of  dolts  to  smooth,  inlay,  and  clip,  and  fit, 
Till,  like  the  certain  wands  of  Jacob's  wit, 
Their  verses  tallied. 

The  Endymion  had  shown  not  even  the  slightest 
acquaintance  with  the  secrets  of  Dryden's  meter. 
But  now  in  Lamia,  Keats, 

Whom  Dryden's  force  and  Spenser's  fays 
Have  heart  and  soul  possessed, 

as  Landor  wrote  to  Joseph  Ablett,  not  only  stiffened 
and  brightened  his  verse,  cleaned  and  sharpened  his 
pen,  improved  and  simplified  his  narrative  procedure; 
but  he  indulged  in  all  the  tricks  of  Dryden,  the  Alex- 
andrine, the  triplet,  the  triplet-Alexandrine,  the 
antithesis,  the  inversion,  the  stopped  couplet;  and 
he  took  to  harmonizing  his  sentence-structure  with 
his  verse  form. 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  331 

From  vale  to  vale,  from  wood  to  wood,  he  flew, 

Breathing  upon  the  flowers  his  passion  new, 

And  wound  with  many  a  river  to  its  head, 

To  find  where  this  sweet  nymph  prepared  her  secret  bed. 

She  was  a  gordian  shape  of  dazzling  hue, 
Vermilion-spotted,  golden,  green,  and  blue; 
Striped  like  a  zebra,  freckled  like  a  pard, 
Eyed  like  a  peacock,  and  all  crimson  barred.  .  .  . 
She  seemed,  at  once,  some  penanced  lady  elf, 
Some  demon's  mistress,  or  the  demon's  self. 

He  even  ventured  into  graceful  cynicism;  his  heroine 
was  canny  in  her  behavior  towards  Lycius  the  lover, 

So  threw  the  goddess  off,  and  won  his  heart 
More  pleasantly  by  playing  woman's  part, 
With  no  more  awe  than  what  her  beauty  gave, 
That,  while  it  smote,  still  guaranteed  to  save. 

He  seldom  caught  the  accent  exactly,  or  caught  it 
for  long  at  a  time,  nor  did  his  new  cloak  always  fit 
him;  to  be  caustic  was  hardly  his  role.  It  was  as  if 
a  gardener  had  suddenly  called  for  a  two-handed 
sword  to  trim  stray  petals  from  his  gentlest  rose. 
But  his  ambition  to  become  another  man  than  him- 
self is  everywhere  apparent.  Not  that  Keats  wished 
to  be  Dryden;  he  only  wished  to  extend  his  metrical 
bounds.  Only  once  did  he  help  himself  to  an  idea 
of  Dryden 's  for  its  own  sake.  The  third  stanza  of 
Annus  Mirabilisy 

For  them  alone  the  Heavens  had  kindly  heat, 
In  Eastern  Quarries  ripening  precious  Dew; 
For  them  the  Idumsean  Balm  did  sweat, 
And  in  hot  Ceilon  spicy  Forrests  grew, 


332         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 
became  the  fifteenth  stanza  of  Isabella: 

For  them  the  Ceylon  diver  held  his  breath, 
And  went  all  naked  to  the  hungry  shark; 

For  them  his  ears  gushed  blood;  for  them  in  death 
The  seal  on  the  cold  ice  with  piteous  bark 

Lay  full  of  darts;  for  them  alone  did  seethe 
A  thousand  men  in  troubles  wide  and  dark; 

Half-ignorant,  they  turned  an  easy  wheel 

That  set  sharp  racks  at  work,  to  pinch  and  peel. 

Byron's  imagination  seems  to  have  been  saturated 
with  the  Fables,  particularly  with  Theodore  and 
Honoria.  Ravenna  to  him  meant  deep  romantic 
woods  and  a  lady  pursued  by  hounds,  as  it  had  meant 
them  to  Gibbon  before.  His  letters  from  that  place 
were  full  of  Dryden's  story,  and  in  the  third  canto 
of  Don  Juan  he  apostrophized  the  scene  of  Honoria 's 
punishment: 

Evergreen  forest!  which  Boccaccio's  lore 
And  Dryden's  lay  made  haunted  ground  to  me. 

Later  in  the  century  poets  as  different  from  Dry- 
den  and  from  one  another  as  Tennyson,  Poe,  and 
Francis  Thompson  drew  upon  him  for  musical  effects. 
Tennyson  studied  his  meters,  both  in  the  couplet- 
poems  and  in  the  songs,  admiring,  even  envying,  the 
force  of  both.  "'What  a  difference,'  he  would  add," 
writes  Hallam  Tennyson,  apropos  of  translating 
Homer,  "between  Pope's  little  poisonous  barbs,  and 
Dryden's  strong  invective!  And  how  much  more 
real  poetic  force  there  is  in  Drydenl  Look  at  Pope: 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  333 

He  said,  observant  of  the  blue-eyed  maid, 
Then  in  the  sheath  returned  the  shining  blade, 

then  at  Dryden : 

He  said;  with  surly  faith  believed  her  word, 
And  in  the  sheath,  reluctant,  plunged  the  sword." 

It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  Poe  did  not  have  in 
mind  the  superb  second  stanza  of  the  Song  for  St. 
Cecilia's  Day  (1687)  l  when  he  began  his  Israfel 
thus: 

In  Heaven  a  spirit  doth  dwell 
"Whose  heart-strings  are  a  lute"; 

None  sing  so  wildly  well 

As  the  angel  Israfel, 

And  the  giddy  stars  (so  legends  tell) 

Ceasing  their  hymns,  attend  the  spell 
Of  his  voice,  all  mute. 

Francis  Thompson,  a  Roman  Catholic  mystic,  a 
writer  of  rapturous  odes,  a  lover  of  strange  cadences, 
was  intoxicated  with  Dryden 's  verse,  and  proposed 
an  essay  upon  it.  His  ambition  as  a  poet  was  that 
he  might  endure  as  long  as  Dryden,  Milton,  and 
Keats.  His  poem  To  My  Godchild  Francis  M.  W.  M. 
goes  directly  back  to  the  world  of  Dryden  and  Con- 
greve : 

The  Assisian,  who  kept  plighted  faith  to  three, 
To  Song,  to  Sanctitude,  and  Poverty, 
(In  two  alone  of  whom  most  singers  prove 
A  fatal  faithfulness  of  during  love!); 
^ee  page  253. 


334         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

He  the  sweet  Sales,  of  whom  we  scarcely  ken 
How  God  he  could  love  more,  he  so  loved  men; 
The  crown  and  crowned  of  Laura  and  Italy; 
And  Fletcher's  fellow — from  these,  and  not  from  me, 
Take  you  your  name,  and  take  your  legacy! 

Or,  if  a  right  successive  you  declare 

When  worms,  for  ivies,  intertwine  my  hair, 

Take  but  this  Poesy  that  now  followeth 

My  clayey  hest  with  sullen  servile  breath, 

Made  then  your  happy  freedman  by  testating  death. 

My  song  I  do  but  hold  for  you  in  trust, 

I  ask  you  but  to  blossom  from  my  dust. 

When  you  have  compassed  all  weak  I  began, 

Diviner  poet,  and  ah!  diviner  man; 

The  man  at  feud  with  the  perduring  child 

In  you  before  song's  altar  nobly  reconciled; 

From  the  wise  heavens  I  half  shall  smile  to  see 

How  little  a  world,  which  owned  you,  needed  me. 

If,  while  you  keep  the  vigils  of  the  night, 

For  your  wild  tears  make  darkness  all  too  bright, 

Some  lone  orb  through  your  lonely  window  peeps, 

As  it  played  lover  over  your  sweet  sleeps, 

Think  it  a  golden  crevice  in  the  sky, 

Which  I  have  pierced  but  to  behold  you  by! 

And  when,  immortal  mortal,  droops  your  head, 
And  you,  the  child  of  deathless  song,  are  dead, 
Then,  as  you  search  with  unaccustomed  glance 
The  ranks  of  Paradise  for  my  countenance, 
Turn  not  your  tread  along  the  Uranian  sod 
Among  the  bearded  counsellors  of  God; 
For,  if  in  Eden  as  on  earth  are  we, 
I  sure  shall  keep  a  younger  company: 
Pass  where  beneath  their  ranged  gonfalons 


REPUTATION:  CONCLUSION  335 

The  starry  cohorts  shake  their  shielded  suns, 

The  dreadful  mass  of  their  enridged  spears; 

Pass  where  majestical  the  eternal  peers, 

The  stately  choice  of  the  great  Saintdom,  meet — 

A  silvern  segregation,  globed  complete 

In  sandalled  shadow  of  the  Triune  feet; 

Pass  by  where  wait,  young  poet-wayfarer, 

Your  cousined  clusters,  emulous  to  share 

With  you  the  roseal  lightnings  burning  'mid  their  hair; 

Pass  the  crystalline  sea,  the  Lampads  seven; — 

Look  for  me  in  the  nurseries  of  Heaven. 

In  almost  all  respects,  this  still  is  very  far  from  the 
world  of  Dryden's  Congreve.  It  is  only  an  approach 
along  the  avenue  of  meter.  Thompson  has  returned 
to  the  poet  who  spiritually  is  as  little  like  him  as 
any  past  poet,  to  learn  the  secret  of  full  and  level 
music,  of  generous  but  sober  ratiocinative  procedure 
through  couplets,  triplets,  antitheses,  and  needful 
Alexandrines.  Here  is  godfatherly  tenderness  on  an 
unearthly  scale;  the  tenderness  and  the  unearthliness 
are  Thompson's,  the  scale  is  Dryden's.  Thomp- 
son's Heard  on  the  Mountain  applies  the  license  of 
the  triplet-Alexandrine  to  a  basic  meter  of  fourteen- 
ers.  And  his  hoarse  choral  odes  break  now  and  then, 
though  rarely,  into  the  opening  strains  of  the  hymn 
to  Anne  Killigrew.  So  the  story  goes  on.  Dryden 
the  satirist,  the  journalist,  the  celebrant,  the  reasoner 
in  verse  will  continue  to  show  the  way  to  those  who 
would  deal  in  frost  and  iron;  Dryden  the  manifold 
metrician  will  continue  to  reveal  new  melodies  to 
those  who  would  deal  in  bronze  or  in  gold. 

Good   poets   long   dead   have   a   way  of  defying 


336         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

changes  in  taste  and  of  belying  reasons  why  they 
should  not  be  read.  It  may  be  urged  against  Dry- 
den  that  he  was  the  too  unctuous  spokesman  of  a  de- 
caying order;  that,  clear  as  he  may  have  seemed  to  a 
smaller,  more  literary  world,  for  the  purposes  of 
modern  life  he  is  hard  and  opaque;  that  he  handles 
not  images  but  facts,  that  by  naming  he  destroys 
and  by  failing  to  suggest  he  fails  to  create,  that  he 
elaborates  and  disguises  rather  than  foreshortens 
and  intensifies  experience;  that  he  is  more  journalist 
than  artist,  more  orator  than  seer.  But  even  while 
this  is  urged,  warning  may  issue  from  other  quarters 
that  foreshortening  implies  bad  perspective  and 
intensification  a  heat  that  withers  as  well  as  in- 
spirits. If  there  was  something  fatuous  about  the 
opulence  of  the  Augustans  there  is  often  something 
desperate  about  the  simplicity  of  the  moderns.  If 
an  aristocratic  society  fattens  and  sleeks  the  poets 
of  its  choice,  democracy  grinds  many  of  its  sons  to 
powder.  A  man  who  composes  verse  too  exclusively 
out  of  his  faculties  can  hardly  be  judged  by  men  who 
write  too  much  with  their  nerves;  the  imagination, 
the  umpire  of  art,  might  acknowledge  neither.  Dry- 
den  lives  not  as  one  who  went  out  to  rear  great 
frames  of  thought  and  feeling,  or  as  one  who  waited 
within  himself  and  caught  fine,  fugitive  details  of 
sensation,  but  as  one  who  elastically  paced  the  limits 
of  a  dry  though  well-packed  mind.  He  braces  those 
who  listen  to  his  music;  he  will  be  found  refreshing 
if,  answering  his  own  invitation, 

When  tired  with  following  nature,  you  think  fit, 
To  seek  repose  in  the  cool  shades  of  wit. 


APPENDIX 


APPENDIX 

The  Authorship  of  Mac  Flecknoe 

Recent  investigations  *  having  overcast  Mac  Flecknoe 
with  curious  uncertainties  concerning  the  authenticity 
of  its  first  publication,  the  date  of  its  composition,  and 
the  identity  of  its  author,  it  becomes  necessary  to  sum- 
marize both  what  is  known  and  what  can  be  reason- 
ably conjectured  about  a  poem  which  it  has  not  been  un- 
usual to  consider  Dryden's  masterpiece. 

There  seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  the  edition  of  1682,  rec- 
ognized now  as  the  first,  was  a  pirated  one.  The  publisher 
was  not  Dryden's  Jacob  Tonson,  as  would  be  expected, 
but  D.  Green,  who  not  only  was  obscure  but  desired  to 
remain  so,  since  he  printed  no  address  other  than  London 
adjacent  to  his  name  on  the  title  page.  The  publication 
of  the  pamphlet  could  hardly  have  proceeded  under  the 
supervision  of  its  author.  There  was  no  preface,  strangely 
enough  at  least  for  Dryden,  and  the  text  was  one  of  which 
an  intelligent  man  would  have  been  permanently  ashamed; 
as  witness  line  82, 

Amidst  this  monument  of  varnisht  minds, 

or  line  92, 

Humorists  and  Hypocrites  his  pen  should  produce, 

1  Babington,  Percy  L.  Dryden  not  the  Author  of  Mac  Flecknoe. 
Modern  Language  Review.  January,  1918.  Thorn-Drury,  G.  Dryden's 
Mac  Flecknoe.  A  Vindication.  Ibid.  July,  1918.  Belden,  H.  M.  The 
Authorship  of  Mac  Flecknoe.  Modern  Language  Notes.  December, 
1918. 


340  APPENDIX 

metrically  impossible,  or  lines  135-6, 

And  from  his  brows  damps  of  oblivion  shed, 
Full  of  the  filial  dulness, 

where  the  only  conceivable  point  is  lost,  or  line  167, 
But  write  thy  best,  on  th'  top;  and  in  each  line — 

which  means  nothing. 

Had  the  poem  been  brand  new  in  1682,  as  has  been 
supposed  by  those  who  have  believed  it  an  almost  ex- 
tempore reply  to  Shad  well's  Medal  of  John  Bayes,  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  see  why  it  should  have  escaped  so  completely  from 
the  author's  hands;  since  surely  he  would  lose  no  time  him- 
self in  getting  it  to  a  printer.  The  fate  of  Mac  Flecknoe 
was  a  fate  not  uncommonly  visited  upon  works  for  some 
time  existent  and  circulating  in  manuscript.  That  Mac 
Flecknoe  was  such  a  work  is  far  from  impossible.  It  is 
possible,  for  instance,  that  it  had  been  composed  upon  the 
occasion  of  Flecknoe 's  death  (1678?),  an  event  somewhat 
ambiguously  referred  to  by  Dryden  in  the  dedication  of 
Limberham  in  1680.  As  a  satire  on  Shadwell  it  would 
have  been  as  timely  in  1676  as  it  was  in  1682.  It  alludes  to 
no  play  published  by  Shadwell  later  than  1676.  It  makes 
no  capital  out  of  Shadwell 's  politics,  which  were  con- 
spicuously Whiggish  after  the  Popish  Plot  and  which  would 
naturally  draw  Dryden 's  fire  after  Absalom  and  Achitophel, 
The  Medal,  and  particularly  The  Medal  of  John  Bayes. 
The  epithet  applied  to  Shadwell  on  the  title  page,  "True- 
Blew-Protestant,"  may  only  have  been  D.  Green's;  it 
was  not  repeated  in  later  editions.  The  occupation  of  the 
poem  is  wholly  with  personalities  and  literary  principles; 
chastisement  is  administered  not  to  a  Whig,  or  even  to  a 
drunken  treason-monger,  as  in  the  second  part  of  Ab- 
salom and  Achitophel,  but  simply  to  a  fat  dull  poet  who 
deals  too  much  in  "humours."  Furthermore,  there  is  in- 


APPENDIX  341 

controvertible  evidence  that  the  verses  were  in  existence, 
either  in  manuscript  or  in  pamphlet  form,  eight  months 
before  the  date  traditionally  assigned  to  them  on  the 
strength  of  a  note  by  Narcissus  Luttrell  and  considerably 
before  ShadwelPs  Medal  of  John  Bayes.  LuttrelPs  date 
was  October  4,  1682.  But  the  following  passage  has  been 
cited  from  an  attack  on  Shadwell  in  The  Loyal  Protestant 
and  Domestic  Intelligence  for  February  9,  1681-2:  "he 
would  send  him  his  Recantation  next  morning,  with  a 
Mac  Flecknoe,  and  a  brace  of  Lobsters  for  his  Breakfast." 
That  Mac  Flecknoe  was  not  the  work  of  Dryden  has 
been  argued  from  evidences  of  varying  worth.  D.  Green's 
attribution  of  the  poem  to  "the  author  of  Absalom  and 
Achitophel"  has  been  dismissed  on  the  grounds  that  that 
gentleman,  being  a  liar  no  less  than  a  pirate,  knew  he 
could  sell  ten  times  more  copies  under  such  auspices  than 
he  could  sell  under  any  other.  It  cannot  be  shown  that 
Dryden  was  particularly  at  outs  with  Shadwell  during  the 
later  'yo's.  The  two  men  had  combined  against  Settle 
in  1674,  in  the  Remarks  on  the  Empress  of  Morocco,  and 
in  1678  Dryden  had  furnished  Shadwell  a  prologue  to  be 
spoken  before  his  True  Widow.  In  Tonson's  Miscellany 
of  1684,  a  volume  more  or  less  edited  by  Dryden,  Mac 
Flecknoe  occupied  first  place,  being  followed  by  Absalom 
and  Achitophel  and  The  Medal;  but  it  had  no  title  page,  and 
it  was  not  assigned,  as  The  Medal  was,  to  "  the  author  of 
Absalom  and  Achitophel."  A  legend  dating  from  the 
next  year  has  been  taken  as  proof  that  Dryden  was 
strangely  unfamiliar  with  the  general  class  of  mock- 
heroic  material  which  the  satire  represents.  One  of 
Spence's  anecdotes  relates  that  Dean  Lockier  went  when 
a  boy  to  Will's  Coffee-House  and  heard  Dryden  claiming 
a  complete  originality  for  the  poem.  Upon  the  boy's 
interposing  that  Boileau's  Lutrin  and  Tassoni's  Secchia 


342  APPENDIX 

Rapita  were  obvious  models,  Dryden,  the  story  goes, 
turned  and  said,  "  'Tis  true,  I  had  forgot  them."  Shadwell 
insinuated  a  doubt  as  to  Dryden 's  right  to  the  poem  in 
1687,  in  the  dedication  of  his  Tenth  Juvenal:  "It  is 
hard  to  believe  that  the  supposed  author  of  Mac  Flecknoe 
is  the  real  one,  because  when  I  taxed  him  with  it,  he  denyed 
it  with  all  the  Execrations  he  could  think  of."  Tom 
Brown  gleefully  quoted  this  passage  in  the  preface  to  his 
Reasons  for  Mr.  Bayes  Changing  his  Religion  in  1688.  Dry- 
den  did  not  openly  claim  the  poem  until  a  year  after  Shad- 
well 's  death  (1692),  when  in  his  Discourse  of  Satire  (1693) 
he  spoke  of  "my  own,  the  poems  of  Absalom  and  Mac 
Flecknoe"  He  had  omitted  it  altogether  from  a  list  of 
his  works  which  he  appended  to  Amphitryon  in  1690. 
A  more  arresting  piece  of  evidence  against  Dryden 's 
authorship  is  a  late  seventeenth  century  manuscript  vol- 
ume in  the  Bodleian  Library  at  Oxford  (Rawlinson  Po- 
etry 123)  containing  most  of  John  Oldham's  works  trans- 
cribed by  a  single  hand,  as  if  for  the  printer,  under  the 
title  "Poems  on  Several  Occasions"  Three  items  in  this 
volume,  A  Satyr  upon  Man,  A  Letter  from  Artemisia  in 
the  Town  to  Chloe  in  the  Country,  and  Upon  the  Author 
of  a  Play  called  Sodom,  are  generally  believed  to  be  the 
work  of  Rochester,  "that  incomparable  person,"  accord- 
ing to  Oldham  in  his  Preface  of  1681,  "of  whom  nothing 
can  be  said,  or  thought,  so  choice  and  curious,  which  his 
Deserts  do  not  surmount."  They  are  entered  without 
comment;  but  more  than  half  of  the  pieces  are  dated  and 
placed  in  this  manner:  "July,  1676,  at  Croydon;"  "Oc- 
tober 22-76,  at  Bedington;"  "Written  at  Croydon  Anno 
i677/8;"  "Writ  Feb  1680  at  Rygate;"  "March  i8th, 
i677/8;"  "Aug  5,  1677;"  "Written  in  May  82;"  "Wrote 
the  last  day  of  the  year  1675."  In  the  three  cases  where 
comparison  is  possible  between  these  dates  and  those 


APPENDIX  343 

printed  under  the  titles  of  poems  in  Oldham's  volumes  of 
1 68 1  and  1683,  the  agreement  is  perfect.  On  pages  232, 
233,  234,  235,  and  214  is  found: 

Anno  1678.  Mac  Fleckno 

A  Satyr. 

Four  pages,  or  lines  49-150,  are  missing;  the  rest  is  written 
smoothly,  without  interlineations  or  erasures,  but  hastily, 
with  here  a  word  omitted  and  there  a  word  varied  from 
the  accepted  text.  On  no  account  may  1678  be  taken 
as  the  date  of  transcription,  since  it  is  plain  that  the  vol- 
ume as  a  whole  was  drawn  up  later  than  1680,  either  by 
Oldham  himself  during  the  last  two  years  of  his  life  or 
by  another  person  after  his  death.  Whether  1678  stands 
for  the  date  of  composition,  and  whether  Oldham  is  the 
author,  are  questions  of  a  more  perplexing  sort.  The 
affirmative  in  each  case  is  supported  by  certain  coinci- 
dences that  cannot  be  ignored. 

Oldham,  no  less  than  Dryden,  though  perhaps  in  com- 
mon with  all  his  contemporaries,  understood  the  name 
Flecknoe  to  be  synonymous  with  the  name  of  bad  poet; 
so  that  the  idea  for  the  satire  which,  as  it  happens,  has 
immortalizd  that  name,  might  more  or  less  easily  have 
occurred  to  him.  In  his  imitation  of  Horace's  Art  of 
Poetry  he  opposed  Flecknoe  as  the  worst  of  poets  to 
Cowley  as  the  best: 

Who'er  will  please,  must  please  us  to  the  height. 
He  must  a  Cowley,  or  a  Flecknoe  be; 
For  there 's  no  second  rate,  in  poetry. 

The  idea,  furthermore,  of  giving  bad  poetry  and  Flecknoe 
a  mock-heroic  send-off  is  one  he  is  even  more  likely  than 
Dryden  to  have  come  readily  by  in  1678,  the  date,  not 
impossibly,  of  Flecknoe 's  death.  It  will  be  remembered 
that  Dryden  had  forgotten  by  1685,  or  had  pretended  to 


344  APPENDIX 

forget,  Mac  Flecknoe1  s  debt  to  the  mock-heroic  tradition 
in  general  and  to  Boileau's  Lutrin  in  particular.  Boil- 
eau  was  certainly  no  stranger  to  Dryden  in  1678  or  1679; 
and  it  was  in  1680  that  he  revised  Soame's  translation 
of  the  Art  Poetique.  But  Oldham  was  still  more  signifi- 
cantly involved  with  the  Frenchman.  He  "imitated" 
the  eighth  Satire  and  "translated"  the  fifth;  and  if  the 
Bodleian  Manuscript  is  to  be  believed,  he  translated  the 
entire  first  Canto  of  the  Lutrin  itself,  "Anno  1678."  It 
would  appear  that  he  was  trying  out  his  mock-heroic 
vein  that  year,  at  first  as  the  disciple  of  a  foreigner  and 
later  as  an  independent  artist  with  a  native  theme.  Not 
only  that;  there  are  specific  parallels  between  passages 
in  works  known  to  be  his  and  passages  in  Mac  Flecknoe. 
In  his  Imitation  of  Horace,  Book  I,  Satire  IX,  which  does 
not  appear  in  the  Bodleian  Manuscript  but  which,  accord- 
ing to  the  Poems  and  Translations  published  by  him  in 
1683,  was  "written  in  June,  1681,"  occurs  a  line, 

St.  Andre  never  moved  with  such  a  grace, 

that  is  unmistakably  akin  to  line  53  of  Mac  Flecknoe: 
St.  Andre's  feet  ne'er  kept  more  equal  time. 

A  Satyr  against  Poetry,  dated  in  the  manuscript  1678, 
printed  first  in  1683  without  remark,  and  reprinted  as  a 
pamphlet  in  1709  in  company  with  Mac  Flecknoe  (whether 
as  the  result  of  a  resemblance  only  then  observed  between 
the  two  poems  or  on  the  strength  of  authentic  evidence 
concerning  their  original  relation  is  not  known),  is  con- 
siderably like  Mac  Flecknoe  10x3-103,  which  runs, 

From  dusty  shops  neglected  authors  come, 
Martyrs  of  pies  and  relics  of  the  bum. 
Much  Heywood,  Shirley,  Ogleby  there  lay, 
But  loads  of  Shadwell  almost  choked  the  way, 

in  the  following  passage: 


APPENDIX  345 

How  many  poems  writ  in  ancient  time, 

Which  thy  Fore-Fathers  had  in  great  esteem.  .  .  . 

Have  grown  contemptible,  and  slighted  since, 

As  Pordage,  Fleckno,  or  the  British  Prince  ? 

Quarles,  Chapman,  Heywood,  Withers  had  applause, 

And  Wild,  and  Ogilby  in  former  days. 

But  now  are  damned  to  wrapping  drugs  and  wares, 

And  curst  by  all  their  broken  stationers. 

And  so  mayst  thou  perchance  pass  up  and  down, 

And  please  a  while  th'  admiring  Court,  and  Town, 

Who  after  shalt  in  Duck-Lane  shops  be  thrown, 

To  mould  with  Sylvester  and  Shirley  there, 

And  truck  for  pots  of  ale  next  Sturbridge  Fair. 


A  number  of  deductions  can  be  arrived  at  from  these 
parallels:  (i)  the  coincidences  are  only  coincidences;  or 
(2),  if  a  manuscript  Mac  Flecknoe  was  circulating  in  1678, 
it  was  Dry  den's,  and  Oldham  drew  upon  it  while  writing 
his  Horace  and  his  Satyr  against  Poetry,  or  (3)  it  was  Old- 
ham's,  and  Dryden  knew  nothing  of  it  until  it  was  pub- 
lished as  by  him  in  1682;  (4)  if  a  manuscript  Mac  Flecknoe 
did  not  exist  before  1682,  neither  did  the  Bodleian  text  of 
Oldham 's  poems.  In  support  of  (2),  it  will  be  remembered 
that  Oldham  was  borrowing  from  The  Rival  Ladies  in 
1678,  1  so  that  his  interest  in  Dryden,  no  doubt  always 
great,  can  be  supposed  to  have  been  especially  keen  that 
year,  even  to  the  extent  of  his  occupying  himself  with  a 
Dryden  manuscript.  If  (3)  is  true,  it  must  also  be  true 
that  Dryden,  having  Oldham 's  manuscript  by  him  in 
1684,  several  months  after  the  young  satirist's  death, 
followed  it  scrupulously  as  he  corrected  the  1682  Mac 
Flecknoe  for  Tonson's  1684  Miscellany,  Tonson's  text 
contains  33  variants  from  D.  Green's.  The  Bodleian 
text  differs  considerably  from  both,  but  of  its  15  variants 
from  either  alone,  only  3  are  in  favor  of  Green,  while 

1  See  page  187. 


346  APPENDIX 

12  are  in  favor  of  Tonson.  l  Now  it  is  improbable  that 
the  1684  Mac  Flecknoe  derives  from  the  Bodleian  manu- 
script or  from  any  manuscript  of  Oldham's.  It  is  more 
probable  that  the  Bodleian  manuscript  derives  from  the 
1684  Mac  Flecknoe,  which  would  mean,  what  is  more 
probable  still,  that  (4)  is  the  safest  deduction — that  the 
whole  of  the  volume  at  Oxford  was  transcribed  after  Old- 
ham's  death  by  an  admirer,  perhaps  a  literary  executor, 
who,  having  both  of  the  editions  of  Mac  Flecknoe  at  hand, 
transcribed  that  poem  too  because  he  liked  it,  as  Oldham 
before  him  had  liked  it. 

Whatever  the  date  of  Mac  Flecknoe,  and  1678  deserves 
consideration,  Dryden's  right  to  the  poem  still  is  and  must 
be  always,  except  as  definite  evidence  to  the  contrary 
come  to  light,  undeniable.  It  is  not  true  that  he  ever 
seriously  disclaimed  responsibility  for  it.  The  edition  of 
1684  was  equivalent  to  a  full  confession  of  authorship. 
The  execrations  with  which  he  reassured  Shadwell  could 
have  reassured  only  Shadwell,  who  seems  to  have  been  de- 
void of  humor  in  personal  and  controversial  relations.  He 
omitted  to  list  Mac  Flecknoe  with  his  other  works  in  1690; 
but  so  did  he  omit  to  list  the  Heroic  Stanzas,  The  Hind 
and  the  Panther,  and  Britannia  Rediviva.  The  Lockier 
anecdote  proves  that  Dryden  carried  affairs  with  a  high 

1  Another  seventeenth  century  manuscript  of  Mac  Flecknoe  in  the 
Lambeth  Palace  Library  (vol.  711,  no.  8),  palpably  from  the  hand 
of  a  copyist,  contains,  among  many  variants  that  are  uninteresting, 
6  that  coincide  with  6  otherwise  unique  readings  in  the  Bodleian  manu- 
script: 

line  1 1 :  And  pondering  which  of  all  his  sons  were  fit. 
line  12:  To  reign,  and  wage  immortal  wars  with  wit. 
line  29:  Heywood  and  Shirley  were  but  types  to  thee. 
line  178:  Or  rail  at  arts  he  did  not  understand, 
line  185:  But  so  transfuse  as  oils  on  waters  flow, 
line  196:  But  sure  thou  art  a  kilderkin  of  wit. 


APPENDIX  347 

hand  at  Will's,  and  was  not  accustomed  to  interruption 
or  emendation  by  his  juniors;  but  this  has  been  a  proverb 
for  two  centuries.  It  is  not  difficult  to  believe  him  in- 
capable of  treating  Oldham  so  badly  as  to  steal  from  him 
a  poem  worth  five  times  all  his  others  put  together;  "there 
being  nothing  so  base,"  according  to  his  preface  to  the 
Tempest  (1670),  where  he  was  thinking  of  Davenant,  "as 
to  rob  the  dead  of  his  reputation."  Oldham  had  ample 
opportunity  to  reclaim  Mac  Flecknoe  while  he  was  yet 
alive;  one  wonders  why,  if  the  poem  were  his,  he  failed 
to  include  it  in  the  volume  of  Poems  and  Translations 
which  he  published  in  1683.  It  is  not  known  in  the  first 
place  that  he  had  ever  had  an  occasion  for  writing  a  satire 
on  Shadwell;  he  had  had  no  quarrel  with  that  indefati- 
gable disciple  of  Ben  Jonson.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
well  known  of  Dryden  that  from  the  beginning  of  his 
career  he  was  subject  to  irritation  by  Shadwell;  and  it  is 
to  be  supposed  that  the  differences  between  the  two  were 
personal  as  early  as  they  were  literary.  His  contempt 
no  doubt  was  intermittent,  but  it  must  have  been  easy 
to  excite;  that  he  wrote  a  prologue  for  Shadwell  early 
in  1678  does  not  mean  that  Mac  Flecknoe  was  impossible 
for  him  the  same  year  or  the  next.  It  has  been  remarked 
that  Mac  Flecknoe  was  in  large  part  an  attack  on  Shad- 
well's  theory  and  practice  of  "humours"  in  comedy.  It  is 
significant  that  Dryden  had  for  an  even  decade  before 
1678  been  ShadwelPs  chief  decrier  on  these  points.  The 
Restoration  battle  between  Wit  and  Humour  during 
those  years  had  almost  been  fought  by  Dryden  and  Shad- 
well  alone.  Dryden 's  Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy  and 
Defense  of  the  Essay  (1668),  his  preface  to  An  Evening's 
Love  (1671),  his  epilogue  to  the  second  part  of  the  Con- 
quest of  Granada  and  his  Defense  of  the  Epilogue  (1672) 
had  been  answered  by  Shadwell 's  prefaces  to  The  Sullen 


348         THE  POETRY  OF  JOHN  DRYDEN 

Lovers  (1668),  The  Royal  Shepherdess  (1669)  and  The 
Humourists  (1671),  and  by  the  dedication  of  The  Virtuoso 
(1676).  Dryden,  then,  rather  than  Oldham  or  anyone 
else,  was  likely  to  be  familiar  enough  with  Shadwell's 
critical  utterances  to  hit  upon  a  parody,  in  lines  189-192 
of  Mac  Flecknoe, 

This  is  that  boasted  bias  of  thy  mind, 
By  which  one  way  to  dulness  'tis  inclined, 
Which  makes  thy  writings  lean  on  one  side  still, 
And  in  all  changes,  that  way  bends  thy  will, 

of  these  four  lines  in  the  epilogue  to   The  Humourists: 

A  humour  is  the  bias  of  the  mind 
By  which  with  violence  'tis  one  way  inclined. 
It  makes  our  actions  lean  on  one  side  still, 
And  in  all  changes  that  way  bend  our  will. 

If  there  are  passages  in  Oldham 's  miscellaneous  works 
that  suggest  an  interesting  affinity  between  their  author 
and  the  author  of  Mac  Flecknoe,  there  are  passages  in 
Dryden  that  are  more  than  interesting,  that  in  fact  are 
convincing.  There  are  coincidences  that  seem  better  than 
coincidences.  No  one  would  have  been  readier,  for  ex- 
ample, than  Dryden,  considering  his  close  acquaintance 
with  Davenant's  Gondibert,  to  borrow  from  that  poem 
the  line  (Canto  V,  stanza  36) 

And  called  the  monument  of  vanished  minds 
for  Mac  Flecknoe: 

Amidst  this  monument  of  vanisht  minds. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  *  that  Mac  Flecknoe  parodies  a  line 
in  Cowley's  Davideis, 

Where  their  vast  courts  the  mother-waters  keep, 

a  line  that  could  not  have  been  strange  to  Dryden  in  1678, 

1  See  page  27. 


APPENDIX  349 

since  he  had  quoted  it  as  recently  as  1677  in  his  Apology 
for  Heroic  Poetry.  Nor  was  Flecknoe  out  of  his  mind 
during  these  years.  In  the  dedication  of  Limberham 
(played  1678,  printed  1680)  he  was  writing:  "You  may 
please  to  take  notice  how  natural  the  connection  of  thought 
is  betwixt  a  bad  poet  and  Flecknoe."  He  even  was  turn- 
ing Flecknoe 's  pages  and  reading  them,  though  it  may 
have  been  somewhat  later  than  this  that  he  did  so.  One 
of  the  happiest  images  in  his  "character"  of  Doeg, 

He  was  too  warm  on  picking-work  to  dwell, 

But  fagotted  his  notions  as  they  fell, 

And  if  they  rhymed  and  rattled,  all  was  well, 

seems  to  be  borrowed  from  Flecknoe 's  Enigmatical  Charac- 
ter of  a  schoolboy:  "For  his  learning,  'tis  all  capping  verses, 
and  fagoting  poets'  loose  lines,  which  fall  from  him  as 
disorderly  as  fagot-sticks,  when  the  band  is  broke."  The 
poet  who  made  merry  with  Shadwell's  bulk  in  Mac 
Flecknoe  was  at  least  very  nearly  related  to  the  poet  who 
made  merry  with  that  same  bulk  in  the  second  part  of 
Absalom  and  Achitophel.  Whatever  the  relation,  if  it  was 
not  identity,  the  creator  of  Og  can  be  said  to  have  had 
Mac  Flecknoe  by  heart.  So  had  the  author  of  The  Medal 
when  he  sketched 

Whole  droves  of  blockheads  choking  up  his  way 
in  remembrance  of  the  line 

But  loads  of  Shadwell  almost  choked  the  way; 

so  had  the  author  of  the  Vindication  of  the  Duke  of  Guise 
when  he  called  Shadwell  "the  Northern  Dedicator"  in 
remembrance  of  the  line 

And  does  thy  Northern  Dedications  fill; 


350  APPENDIX 

so  perhaps  had  the  author  of  the  ode  on  Anne  Killigrew 
when  he  wrote  of 

A  lambent  flame  which  played  about  her  breast 
in  remembrance  of  the  line 

And  lambent  dulness  played  around  his  face. 

In  addition  to  all  this,  there  is  the  fact  that  no  other 
man  living  and  writing  in  1678  or  1680  or  1682  had  the 
genius  for  Mac  Flecknoe.  Every  fresh  reading  either  of 
Dryden  or  of  his  contemporaries  proves  this  fact  yet  more 
a  fact.  Certain  Persons  of  Honour  were  clever  enough 
to  have  conceived  the  poem  and  to  have  done  a  line  of  it, 
or  a  paragraph;  but  in  none  of  them  was  there  energy 
enough  to  carry  him  triumphantly  through  with  it  as 
Dryden  came  through.  Oldham  had  carrying  power  and 
staying  power,  but  he  had  not  this  much  humor;  his  canto 
of  the  Lutrin  approaches  the  Satyrs  upon  the  Jesuits  as 
a  limit,  not  The  Rape  of  the  Lock.  The  verse  also  was 
well  and  away  beyond  his  reach.  Professor  Belden  has 
demonstrated  that  he  never  elsewhere  wrote  this  many  per- 
fect rhymes  in  succession.  A  simple  appeal  to  the  ear 
will  convince  an  experienced  reader  of  Augustan  poetry 
that  here  is  meter  twice  happier  than  Oldham 's  happiest. 
The  poem,  in  short,  is  almost  better  than  Dryden  him- 
self. But  that  is  for  Dryden  to  explain. 


INDEX 


Abingdon,  Countess  of,  160. 

Ablett,  Joseph,  330. 

Absalom  and  Achitophel,  62,  85, 
98,  119,  135,  160,  170,  179-186, 
190,  202-3,  206,  233,  258,  265, 
304,  306,  307,  318,  327,  340-2, 

349- 
Absalom  and  Achitophel,  Part  II., 

207-9,  340,  349- 
Achitophel,  character  of,  197-200, 

202,  307. 
Addison,  Joseph,  n,  13,  192,  277, 

292,  309,  314. 
^Eschylus,  244. 
Agathias,  155. 

Akenside,    Mark,    241,    244,    327. 
Albion  and  Albanius,  81,  223,  234- 

5- 
Alexander's    Feast,     252,     255-9, 

293-4,  302,  307,  308,  314,  315, 

316,  319. 

Alexandrines,  99-102. 
All  for  Love,  50,  55,  115,  129,  182. 
Alliteration,  96-97. 
Amboyna,  115,  231. 
Amphitryon,   114,    115,   223,   228, 

342. 
Amynlas,   On   the  Death   of,    162, 

304- 

Annus  Mirabilis,  3,  12,  19,  29, 
39,  40,  42-6,  105-8,  132,  140, 
143,  188,  205,  233,  263,  304, 


Anthology,  Greek,  154-5. 
Antipater,  155. 


Apology   for    Heroic    Poetry    and 
Poetic    License,    52,    117,    261, 

349- 

Aristophanes,  164. 
Aristotle,   15,   17,   19,  23,  26,  52, 

59,  66,  78,  147. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  262,  322-4. 
Art  of  Painting,  67. 
Art  of  Poetry,  28,  118,  304. 
Ashmole,  Elias,  18. 
Assignation,  The,  9,  115,  295. 
Astreea   Redux,   16,  22,   106,   142, 

1 88,  304. 
Athenaeus,  256. 
Atterbury,  Francis,  91-2. 
Aubrey,  John,   8,   184,   193,   221. 
Aureng-7*be,  38,  48,  49,  114,  132, 

178,  223,  293. 
Awdeley,  John,  191. 

Babington,  Percy  L.,  339. 
Bacon,  Francis,  15,  17,  19,  33,  154. 
Barbauld,  Mrs.,  313. 
Barclay,  John,   191. 
Barker,  G.  F.  R.,  7n. 
Baucis  and  Philemon,  273-5,  3°7- 
Beattie,  James,  81,  312,  325,  327. 
Beaumont,  Sir  John,  25,  76,  90. 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  157,  165, 

204. 

Behn,  Mrs.  Aphra,  166. 
Belden,  H.  M.,  339,  350. 
Bell,  Robert,  320. 
Bellarmine,  Roberto,  16. 
Benlowes,  Edward,  3. 


351 


352 


INDEX 


Betterton,  Thomas,  168,  176. 

Bion,  157. 

Blackmore,  Sir  Richard,  292. 

Blake,  William,  34,  70. 

Blank  verse,  115-6. 

Boccaccio,  51,   140,  270,  287-90, 

332. 
Boileau,   n,  28,  52,   116,   117-8, 

119,  141,  186,  242,  292,  341,  344. 
Bolingbroke,  Earl  of,  214,  255. 
Bossu,  Rene  Le,  116. 
Bossuet,  181. 

Boswell,  James,  294,  312,  315. 
Bowles,  W.  L.,  317. 
Boyle,  Robert,  19. 
Bracegirdle,  Mrs.,  168. 
Breton,  Nicholas,  192. 
Britannia   Rediviva,    8,    144,    304, 

346. 
Broughton,    Thomas,    299,    303, 

304. 

Brown,  Charles  Armitage,  330. 
Brown,  Tom,  99,  167,   178,  214, 

216,  342. 

Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  182. 
Buckingham,   Duke  of,   44,    118, 

308. 
Burnet,    Bishop,    20,     181,     184, 

193,  202,  211,  308. 
Burke,  Edmund,  305. 
Burton,  Robert,  5,  256. 
Busby,  Dr.  Richard,  6-7. 
Butler,  Samuel,  19,  118,  150,  186, 

192. 
Byron,  Lord,  135,  141,  242,  262, 

267,  317,  3i8. 
Bysshe,  Edward,  241,  303. 

Cambridge  University,  8-23,   26, 

35,  188. 

Camden,  William,  6,  95. 
Campbell,  Thomas,  306,  317,  318. 


Campion,  Thomas,  73,  219,  221. 
Canning,  George,  313,  316. 
Cardan,  257. 
Carew,  Thomas,  2. 
Carte,  Thomas,  295. 
Cartwright,  William,  4,  30,  138. 
Caryll,  John,  295~6n. 
Castlemaine,  To  the  Lady,  29,  107, 

147-8,  187,  304. 
Censure  of  the  Rota,  The,  21,  no. 
Ceyx  and  Alcyone,  275. 
Chapelain,  Jean,  117. 
Chapman,  George,  99,  100. 
Character,  the,  189-214,  308. 
Character  of  a  Good  Parson,  213. 
Charleton,  To  Dr.,  19,  21,  26,  147, 

304- 
Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  3,   12,  63,  72, 

88,  132,  191,  213,  262,  269,  270, 

276-87,  314. 

Christie,  W.  D.,  301,  321. 
Churchill,  Charles,  185,  203,  327. 
Gibber,  Colley,  166. 
Cicero,  7,  59,  61. 
Cinyras  and  Myrrha,  275. 
Clarendon,  Earl  of,  141,  143,  193. 
Claudian,  5,  140. 

Cleomenes,  50-1,  55,  114,  115,  223. 
Cleveland,  John,  92,  186,  196,  204. 
Clitarchus,  256. 
Cock  and  the  Fox,  The,  277,  283-4, 

307- 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  7,  61,  242,  263, 

317,  3i8. 

Collier,  Jeremy,  152,  176,  258. 
Collins,  William,  241,  313. 
Conceits,  24-25. 
Congreve,  William,  5,  65,  104,  166, 

184,  215,  226,  244,  292,  294-5, 

300,   309,   310,   333. 
Epistle  to,   102,    151-2,   304, 

307,  308,  335. 


INDEX 


353 


Conington,  John,   320. 

Conquest  of  Granada,    The,   21-2, 

49.  54-5,  "2-3,  229,  247,  264. 
Corneille,  Pierre,  109,  117,  242. 
Correggio,  68. 
Cowley,    Abraham,    15,    24,    25, 

26-7,  30-1,  66,  76-7,  80,  81,  84, 

92,  99,  100,  128,  132,  146,  242-7, 

250,  251,  255,  257,  271,  277,  294, 

314,  343,  348. 
Cowper,    William,    24,    75,    185, 

203,  214,  241,  328. 
Crabbe,    George,    262,    317,    318, 

328. 

Crashaw,  Richard,  2. 
Creech,    Thomas,    95,    121,    219, 

247,  296. 

Crichton,  Reverend  Dr.,  9-11. 
Cymon   and   Iphigenia,    IO2,    132, 

213,  289-91,  3°7- 

Danby,  Earl  of,  182,  295. 
Daniel,  Samuel,  3,  60,   144,  262, 

263. 
Dante,    140,    157,    191,   214,   262, 

323,  329. 

Davenant,  Charles,  174. 
Davenant,    William,    24,    30-35, 

41-43,   66,   73,    105,    109,   269, 

347,  348. 
David 'e is,  27,  80,  92,  132,  257,  265 

348. 

Davies,  Sir  John,  105,  214. 
Davila,  Enrico,  192. 
Defense  of  the  Epilogue,  347. 
Defense  of  an  Essay  of  Dramatic 

Poesy,  67,  94,  347. 
Defoe,  Daniel,  196. 
Dekker,  Thomas,   165. 
Denham,  Sir  John,  24,  25,  30,  76, 

92,  103,  128,  186. 
Dennis,  John,  297,  309-10,  311. 


DeQuincey,  Thomas,  155,  217. 
Derrick,  Samuel,   300,   303. 
Descartes,  Rene,   10,   17,   18,  23, 

91- 

Desportes,  Philippe,  76. 
Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus,  80. 
Discourse  Concerning  Satire,   102, 

125,    154,    185,   201,   261,   269, 

29S,  342. 

Dodsley,  Robert,  305,  315. 
Doeg,   character   of,    202,   207-8, 

3°6,  349- 

Don  Sebastian,  37,  50,  55,  115, 
179,  212. 

Donne,  John,  17,  19,  24,  86,  88, 
92,  105,  144,  157,  191. 

Dorset,  Earl  of,  226,  262,  295. 

Dowland,  John,   219,   221. 

Drayton,  Michael,  3,  90,  144,  263. 

Driden,  John,  of  Chesterton,  To, 
loo,  154,  295,  307,  308. 

Dryden,  Charles,  1 8. 

Dryden,  Honor,  To,  105. 

Dryden,  John;  reading,  2—35; 
English  poets,  2-4;  learning, 
4-5;  Westminster  School,  5-8; 
Cambridge  University,  8-23; 
classics,  10-15;  scholasticism, 
15-17;  "the  new  philosophy," 
17-23;  "the  new  poetry,"  24-5; 
Cowley,  26-7;  Waller,  28-9; 
Denham,  30;  Davenant  and 
Hobbes,  30-5;  goes  to  London, 
35-7;  personality,  37-8;  false 
materials,  40-56;  the  fancy, 
41-6;  the  passions,  47-56;  poetic 
license,  51-6;  false  form,  56-85; 
poetry  as  oratory,  58-65; 
poetry  as  painting,  65-73; 
poetic  diction,  67-73;  poetry 
as  music,  73-85;  monotony  of 
numbers,  74~8o;  imitative 


INDEX 


harmony,  80-85;  genuine  ma- 
terials, 86-88;  genuine  form, 
88-136;  heroic  couplet,  88-93; 
studies  in  versification,  93-4; 
rhyme,  94;  monosyllables,  94-6; 
alliteration,  96-7;  adaptation 
of  accent,  97-9;  triplets  and 
alexandrines,  99-102;  turns, 
102-3;  metrical  evolution,  104- 
36;  early  poems,  104-8;  heroic 
stanza,  105-8;  dramas,  108-16; 
heroic  plays,  109-15;  blank 
verse,  115-6;  France,  116-20; 
translations  from  the  classics, 
120-30;  Shakespeare,  130-1; 
Spenser,  131-2;  Milton,  132- 
5;  genius  for  grouping,  135- 
6;  occasional  genius,  137-9; 
panegyrics,  139-44;  epistles 
and  addresses,  144-54;  epi- 
grams, 154-5;  epitaphs,  155-7; 
elegies,  157-62;  prologues  and 
epilogues,  162-77;  classifica- 
tion, 171-7;  deserts  stage  for 
journalism,  178-80;  prepara- 
tion for  journalism,  180-85; 
principles,  181-3;  tne  satirist, 
182-214;  satirical  temper,  183-6; 
predecessors  and  contempora- 
ries, 185-7;  technique,  188-9;  the 
character,  189-214;  ratiocina- 
tive  procedure,  214-8;  songs, 
219-32;  hymns,  232-3;  operas, 
233~7>  odes,  237-59;  projected 
epic,  261-2;  equipment  for 
narrative,  262-3;  incidental  nar- 
rative, 263-6;  Homer,  271-2; 
Ovid,  273-6;  Chaucer,  276-87; 
Boccaccio,  287-90;  reputation 
on  the  continent,  292-4;  pres- 
tige during  last  years,  294-9; 
vogue,  299-308;  eighteenth 


century,  299-305;  early  nine- 
teenth century,  305-07;  later 
nineteenth  century,  307-8; 
criticism,  308-24;  eighteenth 
century,  308-15;  early  nine- 
teenth century,  315-9;  later 
nineteenth  century,  319-24;  in- 
fluence, 324-36;  eighteenth 
century,  324-29;  early  nine- 
teenth century,  329-32;  later 
nineteenth  century,  332-5; 
authorship  of  Mac  Flecknoe, 

339-5°- 

Dryden,  John,  Jr.,  174. 
Du  Bos,  Jean  Baptiste,  66. 
Du  Fresnoy,  Charles  Alphonse,  67. 
Duchess  of  Ormond,  To  The,  153. 
Duchess  of  York,  To  The,  29,  107, 

304- 

Duke,  Richard,  203. 
Duke  of  Guise,  1 14. 
Dundee,    Viscount,    epitaph    on, 

156,  304- 
Duns  Scotus,  16. 
D'Urfey,  Tom,  219,  257,  303. 

Earle,  John,  192. 

Elegies,  157-62. 

Eleonora,  16,  47,  160-1,  240,  304. 

Ellis,  George,  316. 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  322. 

Empress  of  Morocco,  Notes  on  the, 

4.  34i- 

Epicurus,    214. 
Epigrams,    154-5. 
Epilogues,  162-77. 
Epistles  and  addresses,  144-54. 
Epitaphs,     155-7. 
Essay  of  Dramatic   Poesy,   4,    19, 

25,  62,  94,  97,   109,   117,    119, 

130,   204,   276,   347. 
Etherege,  Sir  George,  118,  165. 


INDEX 


355 


Etherege,  Epistle  to,  150,  304. 

Euripides,    7,    134. 

Evelyn,  John,  20. 

Evening's  Love,  An,  14,  115,  226-7, 

230,  347- 
Examen  Poeticum,  122,  130,   187, 

232,  268. 

Fables,  26,  63,  68,  69,  93,  123,  130, 
J32>  J53»  213,  268-91,  298, 
299,  300,  302,  304,  306,  316,  318, 
325.  329,  332. 

Fair  Maiden  Lady  Who  Died  at 
Bath,  Epitaph  on  a,  157. 

Fairborne,  Sir  Palmes,  epitaph 
on,  157,  304. 

Fairfax,  Edward,  3,  89-91. 

Falkland,  Lucius  Gary,  Viscount, 

I44-5- 

Fielding,  Henry,  166,  192,  196. 
Fitzgerald,  Edward,  320. 
Flecknoe,  Richard,  154,  192,  340, 

343,  349- 

Fletcher,  John,  55,  no,  115,  176. 
Fletcher,  Thomas,   129,   252. 
Flower  and  the  Leaf,  The,  72,  132, 

285-6,  307. 
Ford,  John,  315. 
Fox,  Charles  James,  305. 
French     criticism,     52,      116-20; 

music,   218-25;   poetry,  43,  99, 

loo,    103,    109,    120;    romance, 

109;  tragedy,  109. 

Gamble,  John,  219. 
Garrick,  David,  166,  305. 
Garth,  Sir  Samuel,  310. 
Gascoigne,  George,  73,  95. 
Gassendi,  Pierre,  20. 
Gibbon,  Edward,  181,  305,  332. 
Gifford,  William,  n,  317,  318,  328. 
Gilbert,  William,  19. 


Gildon,    Charles,    224,    244,    262, 

303,  311,  326. 
Goldsmith,    Oliver,    28,    36,    157, 

166,    203,    305,    314,    315,    327. 
Gondibert,  30-4,  73,  105,  146,  348. 
Gosse,  Edmund,  308. 
Gower,  John,  279. 
Granville,  To  the  Marquis  of,  152, 

184. 
Gray,    Thomas,     84,     104,     215, 

242,   244,   246,   311,    322,    323, 

327. 

Green,  D.,  339~4i,  345- 
Greene,  Robert,  191. 
Griffith,  A.  F.,  305. 
Guardian,  The,  309. 
Gwynn,  Nell,  168. 

Halifax,  Marquis  of,  193,  295. 

Hall,  John,  n,  117. 

Hall,  Joseph,  88,  90,  99,  185,  191, 

192. 

Hallam,  Henry,  316. 
Handel,  G.  F.,  252,  294. 
Harris,  Joseph,  169. 
Harte,  Walter,  114,  326. 
Harvey,  William,  17,  19,  26. 
Hastings,   Elegy  on   Lord,   4,    16, 

46,  104-5,  IS7,  l88»  3°4- 
Hastings,   Henry,   of  Woodlands, 

193-6. 

Hazlitt,  William,  307,  318,  329. 
Herbert,  George,  2. 
Heroic  couplet,  88-93. 
Heroic  plays,  39,  40,  49-50,  62-3, 

109-115. 

Essay  of,  109,  261. 

Heroic  stanza,  the,   105-8. 
Heroic    Stantas    on    Cromwell,    3, 

9,   1 6,  26,  29,   105-6,  132,  142, 

3°4,  346. 
Herrick,  Robert,  2,  13,  225. 


356 


INDEX 


Herringman,  Henry,  37,  146,  147. 
Heywood,  Thomas,   165. 
Higden,  To  Henry,  150,  304. 
Hind  and  the  Panther,    The,    16, 

56,  104,  114,  119,  135,  180,  202, 

210-12,  214,  216,  217-8,  265-6, 

3°4,  3°7,  308,  325,  346. 
Hobbes,  Thomas,  15,  19,  20,  21,  24, 

26,  30-35,  41-2,  66,  82,  221,  316. 
Hoddtsdon,  To  John,  105,  146. 
Homer,  7,  n,  68,  70,  73,  82,  122, 

154,  270,  294. 
Translation    of,    130,    271-2, 

304.  332. 

Hoole,  Charles,  6. 
Horace,  5,  12,  44,  52,  66,  67,  118, 

122,  185,  190,  191,  215,  343. 
Translation   of,    125,    247-9, 

250,  294,  304,  308. 
Howard,  Sir  Robert,  94,  no,  136. 

Epistle  to,  26,  87,  146-7,  304. 

Hughes,  John,  240,  326. 
Hunt,  Leigh,  74,  329,  330. 
Hutchin,  John,  196. 
Hymns,  232-33. 

Imagination,  33-35. 
Imitative  harmony,  80-5. 
Indian  Emperor,  The,  13,  no-n, 

114,  159,  223,  226,  253. 
Indian  Queen,  The,  no,  223. 
Isocrates,  7,  139. 

Jackson,  John,  71. 

Jeffreys,  Francis,   315. 

Jonson,  Ben,  2,  3,  II,  13,  24,  30, 
60,  66,  88,  90,  95,  105,  1 20, 
137-8,  144,  146,  161,  164,  173, 
192,  204,  219,  241,  244,  314, 

347- 

Jonsonus  Virbius,  146. 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  5,  16,  36, 


37,  39,  43,  55,  81,  82,  88,  99, 
108,  114,  134,  142,  155,  157, 
166,  181,  214,  245,  250,  294, 
296,  301,  305,  308,  312,  315,  316, 
321. 

Jordan,  Thomas,  137. 

Juvenal,  5,  12,  105,  122,  185,  186, 
188,  189,  190. 

Translation  of,  119,  125-6, 

212,  302,  304,  305-6,  320. 

Keats,  John,  242,  262,  307,  317, 

33°-2,  333. 
Killigrew,    Mrs.    Anne,    Ode    on, 

87,   160,   250-1,   255,   302,   304, 

306,  308,  323,  335. 
King  Arthur,  223,  231,  234-5. 
Kneller,  Sir  Godfrey,  To,  94,  151, 

304,  307. 

La  Bruyere,  Jean  de,  192. 
La  Fontaine,  Jean  de,  242. 
Lady's  Song,  The,  228. 
Landor,  W.  S.,  233,  241,  319,  330. 
Langbaine,  Gerald,  132. 
Laniere,    Nicholas,    219. 
Laokoon,  59. 

Lauderdale,  Earl  of,   129. 
Lawes,  Henry,  65,  138,  219,  221, 

224-5. 

Lawes,  William,  219. 
Latvian,    Erasmus,     Epitaph    on, 

IS7- 
Lee,  Nathaniel,  166,  170,  176. 

Epistle  to,  87,  148. 

Leicester,  Earl  of,  278. 
Leonidas,  155. 
Lessing,  Gotthold,  59,  66. 
Leviathan,    The,    20—21. 
Lillo,  George,  166. 
Limberham,  340,  349. 
Livy,  7- 


INDEX 


357 


Locke,  John,  15. 
Lockhart,  J.  G.,  306,  316. 
Lockier,  Dean,  297,  341,  346. 
Lodge,  Thomas,  88. 
Longfellow,  H.  W.,  262. 
Longinus,  n,  52-54,  78,  119,  256. 
Lord  Chancellor,    To  My,  21,  29, 

ic6,  142,  304. 
Love  Triumphant,  114. 
Lovelace,    Richard,    2. 
Lowell,  J.  R.,  i,  17,  65,  307,  321, 

324- 

Lucan,  3,  13,  254,  263. 
Lucilius,    185. 
Lucretius,  12,  13,  20,  21,  22,  214, 

254,  276,  284,  287. 
Translation     of,     100,     102, 

124-5,  233,  304,  308,  320. 
Lupton,  Donald,  192. 
Luttrell,  Narcissus,  341. 
Lycidas,  132,  159. 
Lydgate,  John,  279. 

Mac  Flecknoe,  27,  206,  265,  303, 

307,  325,  339-50. 
Macaulay,  T.  B.,  18,  44,  99,  262, 

321. 

Mackenzie,   Sir  George,   103. 
Maiden  Queen,  112,  115,  229. 
Mainwaring,    Arthur,    203. 
Malherbe,    Francois    de,    28,    76, 

88,   141,   242. 
Malone,  Edmund,  301. 
Marlowe,     Christopher,     88,     92, 

164. 
Marriage  d  la  Mode,  115,  119,  204, 

220,  227. 

Marshall,  Mrs.,  10,  168,  172. 
Marston,  John,  88,  115,  185. 
Martial,   154. 
Marvell,  Andrew,   140,   142,   143, 

186,  196,  241,  251,  253-4. 


Masefield,  John,  262. 

Mason,  William,  104,  327. 

Medal,  The,  206,  304,  340,  341, 
349- 

Medal  of  John  Bayes,  The,  9, 
37,  109,  188,  340,  341. 

Meleager  and  Atalanta,   272. 

Middleton,  Earl  of,  150. 

Milbourne,  Luke,  103. 

Milton,  John,  2,  3,  12,  17,  23, 
24,  34.  75.  81,  91,  132-5,  138, 
184,  214,  225,  238-9,  242,  251, 
255,  260-1,  262,  277,  286,  296, 
311,  314,  316,  324,  325,  329, 

333- 

Epigram  on,  154,  304,  308. 

Minshull,  Geoffrey,  192. 

Miscellanies,  266,  299,  303-4; 
First,  122,  123,  126,  167,  247, 
34i>  3455  Second,  123,  124, 
125,  128,  129,  160,  183,  246, 
266;  Third,  122,  130,  187,  232, 
268;  Fourth,  128,  277. 

Moliere,  20,  204,  220,  242. 

Monosyllables,  78,  94-6. 

Montagu,    Lady   Mary   Wortley, 

305. 

Montaigne,  5. 
Montpensier,     Mademoiselle    de, 

193- 

Moore,  Tom,  329. 
Morfitt,  John,  312. 
Morris,   William,   262. 
Moschus,  157. 
Motteux,  Pierre,  223,  257,  298. 

Epistle  to,  87,  152. 

Mountfort,  Mrs.,  168. 
Mulgrave,    Earl   of,    38,    52,    75, 

118,  128,  178,  197,  295,  297. 
Music,  seventeenth  century,  219- 

25- 
Music  and  poetry,  73-85. 


358 


INDEX 


Naboth's    Vineyard,    197-8. 
Nash,  Thomas,  191. 
Newcastle,  Duke  of,   14. 
Nichols,  John,  305. 
Norris,  John,  222. 
Northleigh,  J.,    To,   150. 

Gates,  Titus,  179,  198. 

Ode   on   the   Morning   of  Christ's 

Nativity,  3,  132. 
Odes,  237-59. 

(Edipus,  114,  115,  133-5,  223,  231. 
Og,  character  of,  202,  208-9,  3°6, 

32S,  349- 

Ogilby,  John,  126. 
Oldham,  John,  3,  118,  120,  186-8, 

197,  252,  253,  258,  267,  342-50. 
Elegy  on,  85,  87,  158-60,  307, 

308. 

Oldmixon,  John,  94,  103,  310. 
Operas,  233-37. 
Oratory   and   poetry,    58-65. 
Ormond,  Duke  of,  160,  295. 
Orrery,  Earl  of,  135. 
Otway,  Thomas,  166. 
Overbury,  Sir  Thomas,   192. 
Ovid,  12,  17,  20,  36,  44,  51,  61, 

IO3,     122,     148,     157,     262,    269, 
270,  287. 

Translations  from,  47,  122-3, 

268,  273-6,  302,  306. 
Owen,  John,  154. 
Oxford   University,   9. 

Painting  and  poetry,  65-73. 
Palamon    and    Arcite,    63-4,    72, 

153,  233,  280-83,  287,  307. 
Palgrave,  Francis,  308. 
Panegyrici  Veteres,  139. 
Panegyrics,    46,    139-44. 
Paradise  Lost,   22,   75,   132,    135, 

155,  186,  265,  298. 


Parallel  of  Poetry  and  Painting, 

67,69. 
Paston,  Mrs.  Margaret,  Epitaph  on, 

157- 

Pater,  Walter,  324. 
Pearch,  Christopher,  305. 
Pembroke,  Earl  of,   161. 
Pepys,  Samuel,  46,  143,  204,  213. 
Persius,  5,  12,  122,  159,  185,  305-6. 

Translation  of,   7,   212,   302. 

Petrarch,  140,  157,  231. 

Petre,  Father,  211. 

Petronius,  44,  248. 

Phillips,  Edward,  34,  244. 

Pindar,  139,  293,  294,  323. 

Pindaric  Ode,  67,  241-51. 

Pitcairne,  Dr.  Archibald,  156. 

Pitt,   Christopher,   301. 

Plato,  59,  79. 

Plautus,   164. 

Playford,  Henry,  219,  226. 

Playford,    John,    219,    222,    226, 

256. 

Pliny,  5,  44. 
Plutarch,  5,  6,  66,  192. 
Plutarch,   Life  of,  4,   9,   67,    1 1 8, 

155- 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  333. 

Poems  on  Affairs  of  State,  75,  303. 

Poetic  diction,  67-73. 

Poetic  license,  51-6. 

Polybius,   14. 

Polysyllables,  78-9. 

Poole,  Joshua,  77. 

Pope,  Alexander,  i,  37,  72,  74, 
75,  77,  80,  8 1,  84,  90,  91,  95, 
97,  144,  166,  202,  203,  205,  214, 
272,  294,  296,  298,  305,  307, 
308,  309-19,  3^1,  322,  324-5. 
327-9,  332. 

Primer,  Catholic,  232. 

Prior,  Matthew,  150,  226,  314. 


INDEX 


359 


Prologues  and  epilogues,   162-77. 

Prophetess,  The,  223. 

Prosodia,  93. 

Purcell,  Henry,  73,  219,  223,  224, 

235.  252- 

Ode  on  the  Dath  of,  251. 

Puttenham,  George,  60,  73. 
Pygmalion  and  the  Statue,  275. 
Pythagoras,  256. 

Quarles,  Francis,  3. 
Quarterly  Review,  320. 
Quintilian,  59. 

Rabelais,  207. 
Racine,  242. 
Ralph,  James,  300. 
Rambouillet,   Hotel   de,   116. 
Ramus,  Petrus,   17. 
Randolph,  Thomas,  2,  15,  241. 
Rapin,  Rene,   52,   116,   117,   119, 

1 20,  292. 

Ratiocination  in  verse,  214-8. 
Rehearsal,    The,   5,   44,    165,    178, 

214. 
Religio  Laid,  20,   119,   149,   2IO, 

214,  217,  233,  284,  304,  307,  308, 

32S- 

Retz,  Cardinal  de,  193. 
Reynolds,  Henry,  144. 
Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  34,  70. 
Rhyme,  94. 

Richelieu,  Cardinal  de,  193. 
Rival  Ladies,  The,  28,  94,  no,  115, 

130,  135,  187,  345. 
Robinson,  Henry  Crabb,  233,  294, 

3I9- 
Rochester,  Earl  of,  99,  118,   141, 

167,  197,  225,  297. 
Rogers,  Samuel,  317,  318. 
Rogers,    Upon    Young    Mr.,    157, 

304. 


Roscommon,  Earl  of,  80-1,   118, 

1 20,  129. 
Epistle    to,    87,   94,    149-50, 

152,  3°4- 

Rowe,  Nicholas,  262. 
Royal  Society,  18,  26. 
Rubens,  Peter  Paul,  69. 
Ruskin,  John,  70. 
Rutland,  Countess  of,   144. 
Rymer,  Thomas,  52,  117,  120. 

Sacred  Majesty,  To  His.  A  Pane- 
gyric, 29,  106,  142,  304. 
St.  Cecilia's  Day,  Odes  for,  251-9. 
St.  Evremond,  118,  121,  234. 
Saintsbury,     George,     3,     300-1. 
Sallust,  7. 

Saltonstall,  Wye,  192. 
Sandys,  George,  12,  90-1,  92,  144, 

325. 

Sappho,  13. 

Sarrasin,  Jean  Francois,  117. 
Satirist,  Dryden  as,  183-214. 
Saunders,  Charles,  174. 
Savile,  Sir  Henry,  146. 
Scaliger,   Joseph,    n. 
Schlegel,  A.  W.,  294. 
Schlegel,  Friedrich,  65. 
Scholasticism,   15-17,  26,  42. 
Science,  17-23,  44-5. 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  160,  196,  232, 

245,   261,   262,    270,   287,   300, 

306,  316,  319. 

Scroggs,  Lord  Chief  Justice,  197. 
Scudery,  Madeleine  de,   193. 
Sea-Fight,   The,  231. 
Secular  Masque,  236-7,  307. 
Sedley,  Sir  Charles,  9,  226,  295. 
Selden,  John,  93. 
Seneca,  5,  13,62,  134. 
Settle,   Elkanah,   4,   5,   132,    184, 

207,  308,  341. 


360 


INDEX 


Seward,  Anna,  313. 

Shadwell,  Thomas,  9,  27,  36-7, 
43,  109,  175,  185,  188,  207,  209, 
308,  340,  341,  342,  346,  348, 

349- 
Shaftesbury,  Earl  of,  16,  184,  193, 

308. 
Shakespeare,  William,  3,  12,  35, 

47,  54,  55,  86,  88,  90,  102,  130-1, 

132,  135,  146,  151,  157,  164,  173, 

2O3,    204,    212,    263,    286,    305, 

3H,  316,  325,  327. 
Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  242. 
Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  60,  73. 
Sigismonda  and  Guiscardo,  287-8, 

307. 

Silius  Italicus,  14. 
Simonides,   155. 
Sir  Martin  Mar-All,  220. 
Soame,  Sir  William,  28,  105,  118, 

Hi,  344- 

Song  for  St.  Cecilia's  Day,  252-5, 

302,  308,  325,  333. 
Song  to  a  Fair  Young  Lady,  231. 
Songs,    219-32. 
Sophocles,   134. 
Southerne,  Thomas,   174. 

Epistle   to,    151. 

Sou  they,  Robert,  141,  317,  319. 
Spanish  Friar,  54,  115,  205,  223, 

230,  328. 

Spectator,  302,  305,  309. 
Speeches  of  Ajax  and  Ulysses,  275. 
Speght's  edition  of  Chaucer,  276, 

279. 
Spence's  Anecdotes,  37,  77,  81, 

297,  309,  325- 

Spenser,  Edmund,  3,  12,  88,  90, 
99,  100,  103,  105,  131-2,  135, 
154,  157,  241,  253,  262,  270,  277, 
285,  286,  314,  324,  325,  326, 
329- 


Sprat,  Thomas,   193. 

State  of  Innocence,  iS,  22,  32,  113-4, 

132,     148,     205,     234,     238-40, 

326. 

State  of  Nature,  Dryden  on,  21-3. 
Statius,   13,  44. 

Steele,  Sir  Richard,  166,  192,  309. 
Stevens,  John,  192. 
Stevensoh,  R.  L.,  308. 
Steward,   Mrs.   Elmes,   268,   274, 

295. 

Suckling,  Sir  John,  2. 
Suetonius,  192. 
Suidas,  256. 
Swift,   Jonathan,    16,   99,    308-9, 

312,321,  323. 
Swinburne,  242. 
Sylvee,  67,  82,  123,  124,  125,  128, 

129,  160,  183,  246,  266. 
Sylvester,  Joshua,  3,  254. 

Tacitus,  44,  58,  59,  192. 

Taine,  H.  A.,  35-6,  216. 

Tasso,  3,  78,  89,  103,  140. 

Tassoni,  341. 

Tate,  Nahum,  170,  252. 

Taller,  302,  305,  309. 

Te  Deum,  232. 

Tempest,  43,  115,  223. 

Temple,  Sir  William,  57,  73,  154. 

Tennyson,  Alfred  Lord,  242,  262, 

320,  332-3. 

Tennyson,  Hallam,  332. 
Terence,  164. 
Thackeray,  W.  M.,  292. 
Theocritus,  11,  157. 

Translation  of,  123-4,  304. 

Theodore     and     Honoria,     288-9, 

307,  316,  332. 

Thomson,  James,   166,  299. 
Threnodia  Augustalis,  46,    143-4, 

249-50,  304. 


INDEX 


361 


Theophrastus,  189,  192. 
Thompson,  Francis,  332-5. 
Thorn-Drury,  G.,  339. 
Thornton,  Bonnell,  252. 
Titian,  68. 
Tonson,  Jacob,  121,  122,  128,  155, 

184,    258,   267,   299,    300,   302, 

303,   304,   309,   310,   339,   345, 

346. 

Tragedies,  50. 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  8-9, 

15,  146. 

Triplets,  99-102. 
Troilus  and  Cressida,   8,   31,   54, 

55,   115,   184. 
Turns,    102-3. 
Tyrannic  Love,  112,  223,  231,  325. 

Van  Dyck,  Anthony,  65. 

Varro,    185. 

Vaughan,   Henry,    2. 

Veni,  Creator  Spirilus,   232,   304. 

Vida,  80. 

Vindication  of  the  Duke  of  Guise, 

209,  349- 

Virgil,  6,  7,  u,  13,  14,  44,  51,  63, 
68-72,  78,  81,  82,  103,  122,  131, 
154,  159-60,  262,  323. 

Translation  of,  12,  30,  39, 

40,  63,  68-73,  79,  80-4,  89,  93- 
5,  100-2,  119-20,  123,  126-30, 
160,  213,  233,  235,  240,  261, 
266-8,  285,  298,  301-2,  304, 
305,  306,  320,  325. 

Voiture,  Vincent,  220. 

Voltaire,  293-4,  312- 

Voss,  Johann  Heinrich,  294. 

Waller,  Edmund,  20,  24,  25,  28-9, 
30-1,  45,  76,  78,  89,  91-2,  93, 
99,  103,  106-7,  128,  131,  138, 


141-3,  146,  219,  251,  311,  314, 

325- 

Walsh,  William,  95,  297. 
Walton,  Izaac,  193. 
Ward,  Seth,  17. 
Warner,  William,  263. 
Warton,  Joseph,  302,  314-5. 
Warton,  Thomas,  132. 

Edition  of  Dryden,  301,  321. 

Webb,  Daniel,  81. 

Webb,  William,  60,  219. 

Webster,  John,   157. 

West,  Gilbert,  244. 

Westminster  Drolleries,    226,   303. 

Westminster  School,  5-8. 

Weston,  Joseph,  312-3. 

Wharton,  Duke  of,  202,  325. 

Whitman,  Walt,  271. 

Whitmore,  Lady,  Epitaph  on,  157, 

3°4- 
Wife  of  Bath,  Her  Tale,  132,  285-7, 

288,  293. 
Wild  Gallant,  no. 
Wilkes,  John,  259. 
Will's    Coffee-house,    296-7,    311, 

341,  347- 

Wilson,  John,  219. 
Winchester,   Marquis  of,   Epitaph 

on,  156. 

Wit,  24-5,  41-3. 
Wither,  George,  3. 
Wolseley,  Robert,  297. 
Wolsey,    Cardinal,   6. 
Wordsworth,     William,     13,     35, 

81,  86,  219,  241,  242,  270,  287, 

307,   313,   317,   3i8,   319,   320, 

324,  328. 

Zambra  Dance,  229,  247. 
Zeuxis,  68. 

Zimri,  character  of,  189,  197-202, 
306,  325. 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

405  Hilgard  Avenue,  Los  Angeles,  CA  90024-1388 

Return  this  material  to  the  library 

from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


A     000134262     5 


